Ask not what your country can do for you.
Many people believe that the Internet will have the same impact on society as the invention of the printing press did.
It will change our world dramatically by making vast amounts of information available to everyone worldwide if you know how to use it.
I think five years from now we'll see a lot of really interesting applications like collaborative learning with students around the world.
I think you'll see things like electronic commerce in full swing where you can order product.
I mean the QVN of the Internet if you want would be a great place to be as well as probably even this idea that at home arcade games happening through the Internet
where instead of just playing with your brother or sister you can play with pen pals that are now game pals in different parts of the world.
Hopefully it will be more than just game pals.
It will get into interactive discussions and dialogue and make some new and interesting acquaintances.
It kind of broadens your community.
Our goal is to show you how to harness the power of the Internet for your own personal development by visiting a variety of our favorite sites
and demonstrating how to perform a search on almost any subject you can imagine and some you can't imagine.
Visit the great museums and libraries of the world without leaving your home.
Or communicate with fellow students around the world plus much, much more as we will see.
The amount of information available on the Internet boggles the mind.
This video will give you a very small sampling of the content on the Internet and some ways to help you navigate through this great ocean of information.
At the end of the video we will give you a list of the addresses from some of the major websites we will be featuring.
The best way to start is by using one of the many search engines available.
These sites gather the information that is available on the Internet and categorize it so we can narrow our search.
One popular site to do this is called Yahoo!
Let's make up an example and see what we can uncover.
Let's say we need some background information on the Civil War for an assignment.
Or we just have an interest in this important part of American history.
We enter our URL address for the Yahoo! website,
http://www.yahoo.com
and we come to the Yahoo! home page.
From here we have two choices.
We can either select from the general categories that will cover most basic areas of interest
or do a full search on our particular subject.
Let's go to the full search screen and enter Civil War.
Click on the search button and Yahoo! will search through its data on the Internet
and find all entries that have the words Civil War in them.
We are now presented with a page of results.
The words in blue are called hypertext links
and by clicking on them will automatically take us to a website
located on some computer out there in the world.
We have many Civil War choices here.
Any one of them could take us to the Civil War information we are seeking.
Let's pick one of them and see where it leads us.
We click on the hypertext link, the Civil War gallery.
The URL address for this site is hidden in the link and it automatically takes us to the Civil War gallery.
This site contains different photos from the Civil War,
but we want to find more sites with Civil War information.
Most good websites have links to other sites that contain information on the same area of interest.
As we scroll down we find a link that says,
Links to other Civil War sites.
Clicking on this link takes us to a different page in this website.
We have more choices here.
Any one of them will take us to another computer somewhere in the world
that is loaded with more of the information we are looking for.
Another click brings us to still more choices.
Let's try the Civil War collection.
This takes us again to another set of links that all lead to Civil War information.
Choosing any one of these would bring us a wealth of information on our subject.
We have many university, museum, and library sites here to choose from.
The first one on the list looks pretty impressive.
The Civil War archive at the U.S. Library of Congress.
From this site the power of the internet is demonstrated
as we travel back in time through photos for a look at the Civil War.
To narrow our search let's pick a year, 1862,
and we are taken to a screen that gives a good timeline of the major events of that year.
A reminder to you that clicking on links and moving from site to site
usually will take a few seconds depending on the speed of your computer's modem.
For the purposes of this video we are moving instantly to each screen with the help of video editing.
As we scroll down the events we come to a hot link about the battle of the monitor and the Merrimack.
Clicking on that site finally gives a list of photos we can view.
Here is where we travel back in time.
We choose a photo that shows sailors relaxing on deck.
This takes us to a small picture along with a description of what the picture is about.
To view the picture in detail click on it and it downloads the image to your computer
where you can now view it in great detail.
Now you can examine in detail the sailors on board the ship.
You can take time you want.
Look at their uniforms, their footwear, the expressions on their faces,
and you can almost get a feeling of what was going through their minds on this July 9, 1862.
At this point you can save this picture to your hard drive for your own personal use only
or close it down and go on to the next picture.
Again, this is just one subject out of thousands that you can investigate with the help of the Internet.
If you are serious about your education, learn to use the Internet.
It can be a great tool for finding information, getting help with problems,
exploring new areas of interest, and much more.
Well, now that we've traveled back in time, let's go forward in time and travel out of this world.
What you are looking at is a great site that contains some of the best images
from the many planetary explorations that NASA has done.
You can not only look at photos of all the planets and many planetary moons,
but also leave our solar system and view photos of the universe taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Let's choose a planet and see where it takes us.
Our choices here go from closest to the Sun to farthest.
Let's pick this nice colorful blue marble-like planet called Earth.
Clicking on the picture brings us to a complete section on Earth.
It starts with a planet profile that gives us general statistics on our planet.
This could be helpful for the inevitable report you will have to do on Earth sometime in your school life.
As we scroll down this site, we are presented with choices of which view of Earth we would like to see.
At the top of the page, our first four choices are the whole Earth, Antarctica, Australia, and Mount Etna in Sicily.
Let's go for the big picture and see the whole planet Earth.
Now, pictures and graphics can also have instructions hidden in them
that gives the computer instructions on what to do next, just like the blue hypertext words.
You don't need to know the address or file instructions.
Just click on the image and the computer on the other end will take care of everything for you.
Clicking on the small photo of Earth tells the computer to download a bigger version that we can view.
We do this and up comes a full image of our planet from space.
We can now view it for as long as we want or save it to our computer's hard drive for more detailed viewing later.
Remember, it's okay to save these images to your computer,
but it is only for your own personal use and can't be used for any other purposes.
Visiting these sites is like going to your favorite museum, all this information contained in one place.
In fact, there are famous museums that have their own websites that are also great sources of information
for doing research and gathering information in general.
The Smithsonian is a huge site with vast amounts of information on art, history, science, and more.
From the home page, we enter the museum and we can even hear a greeting from the secretary of the museum.
My name is Michael Heyman and I am the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
Many people come to the Smithsonian expecting to find one building filled with all the collections,
but as you'll see, it's really an enormous network of people and activity, museums and art galleries,
research projects and special performances.
On behalf of all of my colleagues, I want to welcome you.
After all, the Smithsonian belongs to everyone.
Whether you're interested in art, in history, in science, or human cultures,
all exhibitions and activities here are for your discovery and your enjoyment.
The best place to start is at the general overview page.
From here, we can scroll down a list of museum sites within the Smithsonian.
From here, we could activate links to the National Air and Space Museum, the Albert Einstein Planetarium,
the National Museum of American Art, and so much more.
Let's choose one of these, the Museum of American Art,
where we can view paintings or art objects from many of the great American artists.
So far, we've shown you how to do a little time traveling by using a basic Internet search tool
and explore one of the world's great museums.
This will get you started, but the best thing to do is follow the hypertext links,
explore the Internet, and discover your own favorite sites.
It's kind of like going to a new city.
The streets aren't familiar at first, but after traveling around for a while,
you'll discover your favorite places in the city that have the activities and interests you're looking for.
The Internet has not forgotten about the children of the world.
There are sites galore for kids of all ages,
whether they're in grade school, high school, or getting ready to enter college.
One of the many sites for kids and a great place to start is the Kids Web.
This site is packed with information of all kinds for kids.
To start, choose from one of the main categories, the Arts, Sciences, Social Studies, or Miscellaneous.
Again, let's make up an instance where we need some help with an assignment.
Let's say our teacher wants us to do a report on the country of Cambodia.
To start, we need some basic facts on the country.
Under Miscellaneous, let's click on the link called Reference Material,
which brings all the major reference guides to our fingertips.
We need some facts. Well, let's go to the World Factbook.
This brings us to, of all places, the CIA's website.
Now, don't worry. It's okay that we are here.
They keep their top secret files someplace else.
We click on Publications, then World Factbook.
Now, pick your country by entering the first letter of the country, or scroll down until you come to it.
We scroll down to our subject, Cambodia, and here we find a large amount of information,
from geography to government, from population to economics,
everything you would need to start a report on that country.
The next step of our journey takes us to a great site for kids to talk to kids all over the world.
It's called Web 66 from the University of Minnesota.
This site has links to schools all over the world that have started their own websites.
From here, you can look at what is going on at schools worldwide,
and through email, start some lines of communication between yourself and a school on the other side of the planet.
We feel this is the power of the Internet at its best,
a chance for children to discover that they have more in common with other children of the world than they may think.
Let's try it out.
To start, bring up a map of North America, Australia, or Europe.
From the map, click on a state, province, or country,
and you are presented with a list of school websites for that area.
These lists are growing at an astounding rate.
We just clicked on Kansas, and up comes the state's school websites.
We pick El Dorado High, and we have more links to news and features from their school.
You can see other schools fundraising ideas, articles from students, and other areas of interest.
To start up a dialogue, click on the link that brings up an email box.
Enter your message with a return email address, send it, and see how long it takes to get a reply.
Let's do one more. Click on Australia, then Queensland, and from this list, how about the Anglican Church Grammar School?
Again, if you want to start some communication with them, click on the email launch, send your message,
and keep checking your email for a reply.
This Web 66 site can give you great ideas on how to start a website for your own school.
Many more are being added all the time.
Maybe you'll be the one in your school to add your school to the World Wide Web.
For kids moving into the teen category, there are sites just for you, too, on the Internet.
One site we have found is called MidLink Magazine, and it's aimed at young people ages 10 to 15.
This site is an educational project from the University of Central Florida.
As we move down the site, we find many links to different pages in their site, like a table of contents in a book.
In fact, this is a good example of an online electronic magazine.
Exploring all these links can keep you busy for quite a while.
As you can see, there is the People of Character theme, news of an international book fair,
and also a fun link called Design an Alien for Fun or a Science Project.
Speaking of science projects, it's pretty difficult going all the way through school without having to do a science project.
If this is the case for you, there are ideas on the Internet if you look for them.
For instance, Washington State University has an area of their website called the Virtual Science and Math Fair.
It has information on science and math fairs for students and teachers alike.
One of the links is called Ideas and Sample Entries.
You might be able to use these as a starting place to come up with your own original ideas.
We go next to three sample entries.
This one sounds intriguing, Soggy Cereal.
We click here and we come to a project done by three eighth graders at the Lincoln Middle School in Pullman, Washington.
Their idea consisted of choosing four cereals and running tests to determine which one stayed crisp the longest.
They showed their methodology or how they were going to test this, then the apparatus they used,
and finally their results showing which cereal was the champion of crispness.
The Internet is a great place to brainstorm with other people's ideas to help you come up with original ideas of your own.
The Internet has been around since the 1960s and some of the biggest contributors to its development have been educational institutions.
Colleges and universities from all over the world continue to be the biggest users of the Internet.
So it's not surprising that we can find thousands of websites representing schools worldwide.
This fact can be great help if young adults or parents are looking for the right college to attend.
Let's look at some ways of doing this.
It's back to Yahoo to start our search.
Under education is the subcategory universities.
Clicking on this hypertext link tells the Yahoo computer to present us with a list of sites to visit to explore universities.
As we scroll down, this can look pretty intimidating.
Look at all those countries.
Choosing any one would bring us a list of universities for that country.
Let's try and narrow it down a bit.
At the bottom, here is an index called University World Wide Web Servers that will get us closer to the information we are seeking.
Here are universities listed alphabetically all over the country.
Let's pick one at random and see where it leads us.
How about the University of Washington?
This takes us to the home page for this school.
A unique feature of this home page is this picture you are looking at.
When you are connected to the site, a camera snaps a picture of the campus and you get to see what it looks like and the weather conditions at that very instant.
As we scroll down, we have our links to other main areas of the website.
Our interest is in finding enrollment information.
The link that says the UW looks like a good place to start.
Our number of choices are growing and getting more precise.
Under information for students is the UW bulletin that has the subject matter we want.
From this page, we click on procedures and fees.
Then, quarterly tuition rates and there are the resident and non-resident rates for autumn of 1994.
This is fine if you know where you want to go, but what if you don't have a clue where to attend college?
We found a helpful site on the internet called the Internet College Exchange.
At this site, you can enter some search information and the site will give you some college choices.
Let's give it a try.
Let's say we are interested in a four-year college in the southwest.
We don't want too big or too small, so how about a medium-sized school, 5,000 to 10,000 students?
The site then asks for your state of residence so they can properly calculate the tuition.
We select Washington State and finally comes the toughest question, how much can we afford?
Let's try $8,000 a year and hit the search button.
The ICX site is now searching a database created by the U.S. Department of Education and here are the results.
These schools meet the requirements we entered.
We select one at random and up comes more information on the school and how to reach them for more information.
Now, after much searching, you have found the college you want to attend.
Now, what course of study will you follow?
There is some help on the Internet.
Some college websites maintain a file of past exams.
A person could open up these exams, take the test, and see if the subject is really going to be of interest to them.
Unlike a real test, you can also download the answers to grade yourself with after you're done.
Let's take a look at a psychology midterm exam.
This is a great way to investigate different areas of college study and see which ones might suit you best.
If the study of astronomy is of interest to you, here is a site to investigate.
Increasingly, many college professors are making use of space in a university's website to display information about the subject they teach.
If you are a student in this professor's class, you can email the prof with questions.
Make sure you have the details to this week's homework assignment,
or you can even look at the lecture notes of class for a particular day to help you study for a test.
We click on the day in question and it takes us to that day's lecture.
Even if you aren't a student, you can still come to this site and find information if you have an interest in astronomy.
As you can see, there are links to other areas, such as exploring Mars or learning about craters around the solar system.
It's clear, the better you know how to use the Internet as an educational tool,
the better off you are going to be in the world of higher education.
We've attempted to show you how to find areas of interest on the Internet by using a search engine such as Yahoo!
There are other ways to search for information, and we are going to look at one of them.
A gopher site is a one-stop source for finding information on the Internet.
Through our Internet software, we will enter a gopher site.
Like Yahoo!, this gopher site is divided up into general categories that sit next to folder icons.
Opening up any of these folders will present us with more specific choices.
We just keep moving down level after level until we get to the specific information we want.
As we click on the Arts and Leisure folder, eight more open up with more specific areas.
We could examine an electronic art gallery, look at professional sports schedules,
or download computer sound files from the Archive of Sounds.
Let's look at the Smithsonian Photographs and Viewing Software folder.
From here, we can download software that would enable our computer to view photos and other graphics.
Most images we download from the computer are in a file format called JPEG.
So from here, we can get a JPEG viewer for our computer.
As we click on the JPEG folder, the files become visible on the right side of the screen.
We can then click on one of these file icons, and the image will download to our computer
where we can view it and save it to our hard drive if we wish.
Let's look at another one. By clicking on the Weather Everywhere folder, we now have five more choices.
Let's choose the satellite images next. Click on one of our choices on the right side,
and after a minute or so, we will be able to view this very recent satellite image of North America.
Earlier, we found some good reference sites on the Kids Web.
As you will see, there is also an abundance of reference material available on this gopher.
We begin by clicking on the Reference Desk folder. This presents us with 12 more folders.
Our choices here include finding telephone area codes and postal zip codes,
searching for electronic magazines, or many searchable dictionaries and thesauruses.
But if you really want to see the power of the Internet for doing research and finding information,
just click on the folder Libraries of the Internet.
Now hold onto your hats and click the icon that says Other Libraries Around the U.S.
Up comes over 100 libraries that you could click on and get even more information of all kinds.
There are city libraries, state libraries, university libraries, and other library gophers.
The amount of information available from this point on is tremendous.
Never again will you be able to use the excuse of,
Gee, I just couldn't make it to the library last night.
This is just a very general introduction to gophers. Spend some time here.
Learn how to use it. Stay focused on your subject. And you literally can have a world of information at your fingertips.
While you've watched this video, we've done a search for Civil War information, looked at good sites for children,
visited the Smithsonian Museum and the CIA, found out what kids in other countries did in school,
visited some college campuses, and got some ideas on setting up a science project.
Not bad for 30 minutes, is it?
We think you will agree after watching this video that the Internet will change the way we learn forever.
Well, we're off to our next website, and we hope you enjoy the Internet as much as we do.
Remember, in the next century, the person with the most information wins.
Good luck on your journey. Surf wisely, and have a great time.
professor at the University of Virginia
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