Guidelines for Internet safety

Guidelines for Internet safety

Although a valuable instructional tool in the classroom, the Internet does comes with some real dangers. Keeping in mind a few simple precautions will help protect students from potential dangers. It is important to supervise the students as they begin their journey on the Internet. One way to facilitate the students in their learning process is to provide safe and valuable sites. Emphasize to students that information on the Internet is posted by both reliable and unreliable sources.

Safety Tips for kids on the Internet

• Never give your name, address, phone number, photo, or password to someone you meet over the Internet.
• Never respond to email messages that are suggestive, obscene, belligerent, threatening, or make you feel uncomfortable.
• Report any email that makes you feel uncomfortable.
• Be careful when someone offers you something for nothing.
• Tell your teacher or parent right away if you come across any information that makes you feel uncomfortable.
• Never arrange a face-to-face meeting with someone you meet on the Internet.
• Remember that people online may not be who they seem.
• Get to know your "online friends" just as you get to know all of your other friends.

Information provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

How do I navigate on the Web?

How do I navigate on the Web :- 

Your browser is equipped with many useful features to assist you in navigating through the Web. Some of these features are:

Menu bar
The menu bar, located at the very top of the screen, can be accessed using the mouse. When you hold down the mouse button over an item in the main menu, a sub menu is "pulled down" that has a variety of options. Actions that are in black can be performed, while actions that cannot be performed will be in gray or lightened. The submenus provide keyboard shortcuts for many common actions, allowing you to implement the functions faster than using the mouse.

Tool bar
The tool bar is located at the top of the browser; it contains navigational buttons for the Web. Basic functions of these buttons include:

Command	Function
Home	Opens or returns to starting page
Back	Takes you to the previous page
Forward	Takes you to the next page
Print	Prints current page
Stop	Stops loading a page
Reload	Refresh/redisplays current page
Search	Accesses search engine

Location bar
The location bar, below the tool bar, is a box labeled "Location," "GoTo," or "Address." You can type in a site's address, and press the Return or Enter key to open the site.

Status bar
The status bar is located at the very bottom of the browser window. You can watch the progress of a web page download to determine if the host computer has been contacted and text and images are being downloaded.

Scroll bar
The scroll bar is the vertical bar located on the right of the browser window. You can scroll up and down a web page by placing the cursor on the slider control and holding down the mouse button.

Why do I need a browser?

Why do I need a browser

Once you have an account with an Internet service provider, you can access the Web through a browser, such as Safari or Microsoft Internet Explorer. The browser is the application responsible for allowing a user's computer to read and display web documents.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the language used to write web pages. A browser takes the HTML and translates it into the content you see on the screen. You will note your cursor turns into a pointing finger over some images or text on the page. This indicates a link to additional information and it can be either a link to additional web pages, email, newsgroups, audio, video, or any number of other exciting files.

For example, if you were to click on Florida Department of Education your browser would link to the Florida Department of Education home page and that web page would open in your screen.

What makes up the World Wide Web?

What makes up the World Wide Web :-

The Internet is often confused with the World Wide Web. The misperception is that these two terms are synonymous. The Internet is the collection of the many different systems and protocols. The World Wide Web, developed in 1989, is actually one of those different protocols. As the name implies, it allows resources to be linked with great ease in an almost seamless fashion.

The World Wide Web contains a vast collection of linked multimedia pages that is ever-changing. However, there are several basic components of the Web that allow users to communicate with each other. Below you will find selected components and their descriptions.

TCP/IP protocols
In order for a computer to communicate on the Internet, a set of rules or protocols computers must follow to exchange messages was developed. The two most important protocols allowing computers to transmit data on the Internet are Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP). With these protocols, virtually all computers can communicate with each other. For instance, if a user is running Windows on a PC, he or she can communicate with iPhones.

Domain name system
An Internet address has four fields with numbers that are separated by periods or dots. This type of address is known as an IP address. Rather than have the user remember long strings of numbers, the Domain Name System (DNS) was developed to translate the numerical addresses into words. For example, the address fcit.usf.edu is really 131.247.120.10.

URLs
Addresses for web sites are called URLs (Uniform Resource Locators). Most of them begin with http (HyperText Transfer Protocol), followed by a colon and two slashes. For example, the URL for the  search engine is http://google.com/ .

Some of the URL addresses include a directory path and a file name. Consequently, the addresses can become quite long. For example, the URL of a web page may be:
 http://google.com/ In this example, "default.htm" is the name of the file which is in a directory named "holocaust" on the GOOGLE server.

Top-level domain
Each part of a domain name contains certain information. The first field is the host name, identifying a single computer or organization. The last field is the top-level domain, describing the type of organization and occasionally country of origin associated with the address.

Top-level domain names include:

.com	Commercial
.edu	Educational
.gov	US Government
.int	Organization
.mil	US Military
.net	Networking Providers
.org	Non-profit Organization

Domain name country codes include, but are not limited to:

.au	Australia
.de	Germany
.fr	France
.nl	Netherlands
.uk	United Kingdom
.us	United States

Paying attention to the top level domain may give you a clue as to the accuracy of the information you find. For example, information on a "com" site can prove useful, but one should always be aware that the intent of the site may be to sell a particular product or service. Likewise, the quality of information you find on the "edu" domain may vary. Although many pages in that domain were created by the educational institutions themselves, some "edu" pages may be the private opinions of faculty and students. A common convention at many institutions is to indicate a faculty or student page with a ~ (tilde) in the address. For instance, http://fcit.usf.edu/~kemker/default.htm is a student's personal web page.