SET96
During Science, Education and Technology Week this year we received
generous help from Amersham International to get on-line. They introduced
us to a piece of software called Secret Agent. This allows the Netscape
cache to be read and pages that have been downloaded can be read off-line.
We have a copy of Netscape on our RM network and now Web pages can be accessed
from all 74 stations throughout the school. During a recent Year 9 Technology
Day on the subject of Kites, the students had to refer to a Web page to
find out where the bridle should be fixed.
Amersham International kindly presented us with a 'ZIP' drive for the pioneering
work we had carried out.
I first became aware of the Web about 18 months ago when I took out a subscription to EDEX, my Internet service provider. What a vast amount of information. The problem was you could, and often did, spend hours just drifting through it, moving from one hyperlink to another. Considering the practicalities of using the Web in schools one is faced with two major problems - control and access. To misquote The Hitchhikers Guide, ‘the Web is really BIG!’ and, unless you have some finely developed information searching skills, together with a degree of self control, you will spend a long time looking with little to show except large ‘phone bills. Also, unless you are fortunate enough to have ISDN access to your own network only one person at a time can use the Internet connection. These two considerations seriously curtail the efficiency of the Internet as a teaching resource.
Enter Amersham International
During SET96 they assisted local schools to gain access to the Internet.
This has been very successful as they have been generous in their ‘hand
holding’ for the timid! They also ‘found’ Secret
Agent, a shareware that reads the cache produced by Netscape and fools
Netscape into running off-line - that is without a modem connection. Using
this method it is possible to browse pages from the Web that have been
previously down loaded. I used this software several times and started
thinking about using this technique to make Web pages readable on the school
network. At St Clement Danes we have a 74 station Research Machines LM
Network spread across 3 IT rooms together with clusters in Science, English
and Technology. The main school Internet connection is on one of the stand-alone
machines in the Library and I have a modem and Internet access on a network
machine in my teaching room. This machine, a 486 SX25, additionally has
a hard disk and so is capable of running independently.
So how is it done?
Put a copy of Netscape - we use version 1.1 - on the network, together
with a modified netscape.ini. This should include the following:
Autoload Home Page=yes
Home Page=file:///p|/lib/offline/homepage.htm
(On our Network, all programme executables are located on drive p:/lib
with sub directories off this) Temp Directory=t:\temp
Cache Dir=t:\cache
(This will ensure that a temporary cache directory will be created for
each user as and when they run Netscape)
Copy the Winsock.dll from Secret Agent into the same directory. The on-line Netscape browser together with Secret Agent, is located on the hard disk of the stand-alone machine. Using Netscape, locate the pages you wish to download then click on Options and Network to flush the Disk Cache and the Memory Cache. Next, load all the hyperlink pages you have selected, making sure that you allow them to be fully loaded - look for the ‘done’ message at the bottom left screen each time.
Quit Netscape (this is important) and load Secret Agent. If its not set in the default, load the Netscape cache. At this point you can view your pages to check that you have got all that you wanted. Click on File, and Dump All, to produce a readable collection. Dump this into a previously prepared sub-directory. On the Network create a sub-directory of p:/lib/off-line and copy all these dumped files from the local hard disk into it. With me so far? When you run Netscape on the Network you will be able to open the files in the sub-directory together with their hyperlinks.
A little tidying up remains. Use an HTML editor to produce a ‘homepage’ with hyperlinks pointing to various collections each in their own sub-directory.
How well does it work?
Pages load very fast and you spend less time waiting, although it is better
to avoid pages that are ‘graphic heavy’. Currently we have two collections
on the Network, some Kite pages for Technology and Bodyshop details together
with share prices for Business Studies - but I’m sure it will grow...
I must acknowledge at this point the tremendous help given to me by
Amersham International during all my trials and tribulations. Particular
mention must go to Dr Ed Lorch, whose idea it was to get local schools
involved in the first place. Thank you Ed.
Trevor Mace
Technology Department
St Clement Danes School
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