The Internet

What is the Internet?

Many schools, businesses and other organisations use computer networks, where computers are linked together to share resources. This enables the computers to share expensive equipment, such as a large laser printer, to save work centrally on a single hard disc drive and to communicate with each other, sharing and exchanging data. The central control can make many technical management tasks easier.

The Internet is simply a network of networks. Thousands of networks world-wide, at universities, industrial companies, research establishments, government departments and elsewhere, are all linked together. Rules (protocols) have been agreed internationally, about how information can be exchanged, that allow people using different systems, across different continents, to communicate. No one owns or governs the Internet, it is a truly co-operative venture. Its value lies in the opportunities that it offers for the exchange of information.

Messages/pictures/other files that are sent on the Internet are first broken down into a series of conveniently sized chunks or "packets". The packets are then sent onto the Internet, where they hop from computer to computer, until they reach their destination. The packets are then re-assembled to make the original message.

What services are available?

Those of you that have used a CD ROM encyclopaedia will have used hypertext links. For example, when reading an article on The Orchestra, the word violin is shown in a highlight colour. You click on this and are whisked away to an article on the violin. At the bottom of this section is a list of famous violinists and by clicking on one, you load up that person's biography, and so on.

The Web is rather like a giant, multinational CD ROM, of virtually infinite capacity. The hypertext links on a Web page may just be a shortcut to another heading on the same page, or to another page written by the same author. However, they may be a link to a related page written by someone else, which may be held on a computer anywhere in the world. "Surfing the Web" is the action of following these hypertext links, hopping from page to page, country to country, in the search for, well, just about anything. Search engines are huge databases that you can use to help you find pages on the topic you are interested in. You simply go to them, as you would to any other Web page, type in one or more keywords and you will be presented with a list of related pages.

Each page is cared for (or not!) by its author. Some are better than others at keeping their pages and their hypertext links, up to date. Remember, no one organises the Internet, or is responsible for page content. However, many authors want their pages to be visited and work hard to make them attractive and useful to the reader.

E-mail has been around for a while. It stands for "electronic mail" and it allows you to send messages to another computer user. The message is stored in that person's mailbox and they can download it (i.e. copy the message from a central computer to their own) the next time they connect to the central computer. Initially a lot of e-mail systems were in-house affairs. A particular company had an e-mail system that allowed its own employees to communicate with each other. The Internet allows you to reach a much wider audience, i.e. anyone who is connected to it.

E-mail addresses are usually short and easy to remember, yet are valid internationally. My own address is typical and it consists of my name, together with the name of my Internet service provider. mbaker@rmplc.co.uk can be used from any computer connected to the Internet, from anywhere in the world, and the message will be sent to my mail box at RM's computer centre in Abingdon, for the cost of a few seconds of local telephone call time.

News Groups allow people to engage in a public exchange of correspondence on a particular subject. Anyone can post (send) what is effectively an e-mail message, to add to a particular thread (an exchange based on a particular issue). Anyone can initiate a new thread. It is like having hundreds of bulletin boards on different subjects, that everyone can attach messages to. News groups include alt.bacchus, alt.guitar, uk.education.teachers, uk.education.misc and so on. There are thousands of different subjects covered, some are very serious and some are very flippant.

Apparently, much of the unsavoury material that has been circulating on the Internet has been made available via some of the less salubrious news groups, especially those grouped under alt.sex . RM censor this type of news group, so I have not been able to investigate this particular issue personally! Following some bad publicity, more service providers are attempting some degree of censorship, however, new news groups pop up all the time and pupils can be very adept at finding pornographic material.

Other services are available too, such as Usenet, Gopher and FTP, but the three above are the ones most likely to be of use in schools.

What is needed to connect to the Internet?

If you are going to buy a modem for an existing computer, seriously consider having it installed for you, especially if it is an internal one. Modems can cause a lot of aggravation.

The Internet software is usually provided by your Internet Service Provider. Often it includes shareware, which is itself available on the Internet. Some of this shareware is free for educational users (e.g. Netscape Navigator), some of it requires a fee to be paid to the author. Some service providers charge a set up fee which includes the cost of the software that they provide. You will need a program for each of the different services that you want to use, but some programs integrate, e.g. a WWW browser with e-mail software, etc.

Service providers

A single, stand-alone connection:

Down-loading your e-mail, or programs, from the Internet can potentially lead to computer viruses being copied onto your computer, so make sure that you have an up to date virus scanner operating.

Network connections:

How can the Internet help my school?

I have yet to be shown any class-based activities that really take my breath away, however there is an ever increasing amount of worthwhile material on offer. There is a stronger case for class-based activities than there was a couple of years ago, but pupils need good information handling skills to make the best use of it. Pupils will really enjoy putting their own pages on the Web, but whether that is any more beneficial than doing an exciting wall display, I am not sure. Certainly the motivation factor of publishing material to a world-wide audience cannot be ignored. E-mail offers the potential to communicate easily with other schools, but any joint projects that might use this potential would take a great deal of planning.

I am sure that educational use of the Internet will continue to grow, as we find applications for it. However, I think that there are many uses, with their related benefits, that still need to be identified and developed. Having said that, the future impact of the Internet on our lives is likely to be such that we should be educating pupils about it and be ready to adapt as new uses are found.

Information found on the Internet can be biased, prejudiced, offensive or just plain wrong. I recently down-loaded some animal rights pages, one of which outlined a long list of criminal actions taken by the group concerned, in pursuit of their aims. Clearly such material needs to be carefully reviewed before being considered for the classroom.

I perhaps did the Internet an injustice, by describing it as a fad. It is a maturing technology, used by millions and it continues to grow at a phenomenal rate. It is here to stay, provided of course, that it does not become a victim of its own success, getting clogged up with traffic. Commercial companies are increasingly trying to exploit its potential, however its roots are firmly in a self-help ethos, people sharing their expertise and opinions, making all kinds of material available to a world-wide community of computer users. We, as teachers of the deaf, have the opportunity to join in and make our contribution.