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The Internet Tool KitCompiled by Gerri GribiEmail:Gerri Gribi /// Updated 12/6/04 |
Beyond Black History Month: The African American Studies Toolkit for Grades 6-12? |
A. Books, Magazines, Journals and More: Databases for Wisconsin
B. Searching the World Wide Web
D. Internet Resources and Directories for Educators, Reference Sites
A. Getting your Address - Web Based E-mail
A. Protect your Privacy! Click here to discover what marketers know about YOU while you're surfing.
B. Pain Free at Your PC
WISCAT http://wiscat.brodart.com/
WISCAT is the statewide bibliographic database for Wisconsin. It contains 5.9 million bibliographic records with local holdings statements for 1137 libraries of all types throughout Wisconsin. The libraries listed in WISCAT are willing to loan many of the materials through established statewide interlibrary loan channels.
Badgerlink http://www.badgerlink.org/
Through BadgerLink, residents of Wisconsin now have access to over 4,000 magazines and journals, (approximately 2,000 in full-text) and to other reference materials. You can even use this from your home computer ...IF you use a Wisconsin-based ISP.
Alternate link to BadgerLink for Brown County Residents who have an out-of-state or national ISP. You will use your library card number for login.
Quick Reference Page http://www.apl.org/quick/
Your own personal reference librarian! Looking for a long-lost friend? Need driving directions to Omaha? Want to know what US dollar is worth in Canada? Or what time it is right now in Lima? A fast source for some of the best reference links. Maintained by the Appleton Public Library, this makes a great start page.
Brown County Library http://www.browncountylibrary.org
Browse the library catalog, place items on hold, and more!
You can't beat online used bookstores when you're buying a book: just type one entry and you automatically search the inventories of thousands of used book sellers around the world. It's ideal for out-of-print or rare books, but you can even find recent titles and popular fiction. Half.com is especially good for buying or selling used textbooks.
There are now more than a billion web pages on the internet. How do you find the information you need? A Directory is compiled (and filtered) by human hand and organized by topics, which means you can browse by subject. A Search Engine hunts through millions of catalogued web pages looking for specific keywords. Since not every search engine catalogs every web page, a Meta Search Engine simultaneously searches multiple search engines. Below are a few of the resources I regularly use.
Yahoo http://yahoo.com
The Argus Clearinghouse http://www.clearinghouse.net/
Topical guides which identify, describe, and evaluate Internet-based information resources.
The Internet Public Library http://www.ipl.org/
Now 4 years old, this is the first public library of the Internet. Based at the University of Michigan School of Information, staffed by professional librarians with assistance from students and volunteer librarians from around the world, the library maintains a collection of online ready reference works; responds to reference questions; creates web resources; and evalutes and categorizes resources on the Internet.
Librarians' Index to the Internet http://www.lii.org/
The Librarians' Index to the Internet is a searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 7,600 Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians for their usefulness to users of public libraries.
About.com http://about.com
Six hundred guides, experts in their fields, "mine" the Web for you, covering thousands of topics.
The best search engine depends on the information you're seeking, but it helps to become familiar with one or two and use them consistently (without forgetting there are more out there, and that they're constantly changing.)
Read the search engine's Help section or guide so you understand how to refine your searches. For example, suppose you're searching for web sites about the Voyager space mission. If you simply enter the word "Voyager" you will receive back a zillion Star Trek fan pages. But each search engine will have a way for you to eliminate that: for example, by entering +Voyager -"Star Trek". Or, sometimes if you put a phrase in quotes like "Black History Month" preference will be given to sites with that specific phrase...otherwise, you receive everything that simply has those three words somewhere in the text, and most will have nothing to do with what you're seeking.
Google http://google.com
Google is my preferred search engine because of its unique ranking system. High-quality sites receive a higher page rank determined partly by how many other important sites link to it, which means you're less likely to turn up porn sites. Also, their page is simple to read: though they do list a "sponsored link" at the top, they are relatively advertisement free.
IxQuick http://www.ixquick.com/
This Meta Search Engine searches AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Excite, HotBot, MSN, Yahoo & more. You can specify what you're looking for: web pages, news, images or MP3.
The resources below will help you find and use other search engines:
Best Search Tools http://www.infopeople.org/search/tools.html
On one page you can search using a variety of tools:
Search Engines Quick Guide http://www.infopeople.org/search/guide.html
Compares the various search engines with regard to size, special features, operators, and strengths. Available as Adobe Acrobat PDF you can download and print.(Most systems come with Adobe Acrobat Reader already installed, or you can download Adobe Acrobat Reader here.)
The mere existance of a website carries an air of authority. But don't be fooled: A domain name costs only $35 a year, and web sites can cost as little as nothing. With the web page building software now available (Netscape's Composer comes bundled free with the browser) anyone who can type (including you!) can build a web site. "Awards" are usually nothing more than banner advertising exchanges.
And as for web censoring software: My site is rated "child safe" by both the Internet Content Rating Association and SafeSurf. I simply went to their sites, answered "No" to a list of questions about whether there was nudity, violence, profanity, etc at my site, and the instant I clicked "Submit" I received an email with a code to place on my website. (I believe that's called "the honor system!")
Evaluating Information Found on the Internet http://milton.mse.jhu.edu:8001/research/education/net.html
This site offers a step-by-step guide to evaluating the authorship, publishing body, and timeliness of information you find.
Internet Resource Guide http://www.monroe.lib.in.us/~lchampel/netadv.html
This site is highly recommended for teachers, librarians, administrators and anyone else excited about the educational possibilities of the Internet. It will prepare you to deal with issues of Acceptable Use, censorship, which filtering tools work best (and which don't, and why) the innaccurate perceptions of pornography on the 'net, and more. Created by Lisa Champelli , Monroe County Public Library Children's Department.
Internet Detectives: Madison Metropolitan School District http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/tnl/detectives/evaluation.htm
Provides links to many more resources and evaluation tools.
Quick Reference Page http://www.apl.org/quick/
American Library Association http://www.ala.org/parentspage/greatsites/amazing.html
Over 700 great sites for kids, parents and teachers, annotated and sorted by topics.
Yahooligans! http://www.yahooligans.com/
The Yahoo! directory of sites geared for kids, their parents and their teachers.
About.com http://about.com
Six hundred guides "mine" the Web for you, covering thousands of topics. Not strictly education-related.
The Argus Clearinghouse - directory of site information http://www.clearinghouse.net/
Topical guides which identify, describe, and evaluate Internet-based information resources.
"The Argus Clearinghouse was founded in 1993 on the belief that in order to make the Internet a more useful information environment, human effort must be combined with searching and browsing technologies. As librarians, we believe that for the most part, language and ideas are simply too ambiguous for automated retrieval systems to properly identify and evaluate. It appears that artificial intelligence technologies will not meet this challenge in the near future, so intellectual labor is necessary to provide qualitative assessment of the Internet's information. The Argus Clearinghouse serves as a centralized location for these efforts."
The Internet Advocate http://www.monroe.lib.in.us/~lchampel/netadv.html
A web-based resource guide for librarians and educators interested in providing youth access to the internet. Covers topics such as acceptable use policies, understanding censorship software, plus a wealth of resources for librarians and school media specialists.
The Internet Public Library http://www.ipl.org/
This is the first public library of the Internet. Based at the University of Michigan School of Information, staffed by professional librarians with assistance from students and volunteer librarians from around the world, the library maintains a collection of online ready reference works; responds to reference questions; creates web resources; and evalutes and categorizes resources on the Internet.
Teacher Techline Toolkit http://creativefolk.com/techline.html
A sampling of useful sites by subject area, cultural diversity resources, links to lesson plans, support and more.
Unified School District of De Pere http://www.depere.k12.wi.us/hs/LMC%20Homepage/index.htm
"Home is where you hang your @."
YahooMail http://www.yahoo.com/
MailExcite http://mail.excite.com/
Netaddress http://www.netaddress.com/
Hotmail http://www.hotmail.com/
These free, "web-based" e-mail services allow you to establish a private e-mail account which is accessible from any web browser. They operate independent of your Internet Service Provider, geographic address, or place of employment, which means you can change ISPs or jobs or even move to a different country and still access your mail account from any Web-connected device.
I recommend YahooMail because it requires the least amount of registration information, and also presents the fewest adverstisements when you retrieve your mail.
Mailstart http://www.mailstart.com
If you have a school e-mail address, or a home address, Mailstart allows you to read, respond, and create new mail using that account on any internet computer. (It doesn't work for mail at AOL, or other systems which have firewalls in place.)
At a Bulletin Board (aka "Newsgroup") anyone can post a notice, and anyone can read it and reply. Some are moderated, the vast majority are not. You can read messages posted by using Google Groups.
If you'd like to actively participate, ie. post messages as well as read them, use the newsreader which comes with your browser. See your "Help" section.
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Warning! By using the newsreader, e-mail or any other function of your browser which requires you to provide personal information, you make this personal information available to every website you visit, where it is collected by marketers. Please protect your privacy: To discover how much information marketers learn about you while you're surfing, or when you click on a banner ad, please visit Junkbusters. Also, don't use your primary POP or business e-mail account to post messages to public, unmoderated newsgroups, because you can be inundated with junk mail or worse. I have a Yahoo address used solely for posting on such newsgroups. |
Electronic Discussion Groups or Mailing Lists are like closed bulletin boards and are more useful long term. You "subscribe," though there is no fee or commitment for doing so. You can then send a message, which is distributed to everyone else on the list. People can respond to you privately, or to the list publicly. Some lists are moderated (the owner weeds out flames, irrelevancies and redundancies) but many aren't. Some come in digest form where messages are collected and sent in a batch once or so daily - always choose this option when available since some lists generate huge volumes of mail.
Save the confirmation letter you receive when you subscribe, since it contains valuable information, like how to UN-subscribe, or search the message archive. There are discussion groups for every topic imaginable. Sometimes, a kind soul will compile and annotate a list of related lists for you!
MIDDLE-L - A forum for educators dealing with students ages 10-14
EDTECH - A broad educational technology forum
Internet Mailing Lists Guides and Resources http://www.ifla.org/I/training/listserv/lists.htm
Everything you ever wanted to know about electronic discussion groups, and more from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.
H-NET Discussion Networks http://www.h-net.msu.edu/lists/
With over 100 discussion groups, H-Net's e-mail lists function as electronic networks, linking professors, teachers and students in an egalitarian exchange of ideas and materials. Music, history, culture and technology are just a few of the groups available.
To Communicate With Other Teachers http://mustang.coled.umn.edu/teacherscom.html
Web 66 - A K12 World Wide Web Project http://web66.umn.edu/
An international directory of schools online, mailing lists and discussion groups for teachers and more!
The Liszt List http://www.liszt.com/
The premier directory of publicly accessible mailing lists. You can search nearly 85,000 mailing lists by category or by keyword.
You can also start your own mailing list quite easily:
Yahoo! Clubs http://clubs.yahoo.com/
Computer Virus Myths Homepage http://www.Vmyths.com/
About.com Antivirus Guide http://antivirus.about.com/compute/antivirus/mbody.htm?PID=2827&COB=home
"VIRUS WARNING !!!!!! If you receive an email titled "WIN A HOLIDAY" DO NOT open it. It will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this letter out to as many people as you can."
Don't be caught with egg on your face! Get the facts on viruses, hoaxes and urban legends before you forward that letter...
Pain Free at Your PC. Pete Egoscue. New York: Bantom, 1999 Available at Amazon.com
As computers become a larger part of our daily lives, complaints of painful wrists, sore shoulders, stiff necks and blurry vision soar. But chronic pain can be easily prevented or cured without surgery, drugs, or expensive "ergonomic" equipment. This book teaches how to recognize and remedy problems in posture and movement, and provides easy-to-perform exercises to eliminate chronic pain.