CS101 – Living with Computers

ACTIVITIES & QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

Chapter 7 (Classes 17-19):

Describe the nature of the Internet and the variety of functions it performs.
Discuss several software tools for navigating and using the Internet.
Describe the evolution of the World Wide Web into a multifaceted tool for entertainment, education, communication, collaboration, and commerce.
Explain how the Internet and other telecommunication technologies are evolving into an all-encompassing information infrastructure.
Discuss the effects of the Internet on society (chapter 1).

Bring in any page of your choice with all the HTML source commands (tag) and distribute to groups of students (3-4). Discuss what is seen (tags). (Discuss groups’ lists)
Break class into small groups. Show students a web page and the links. Have groups judge attractiveness, use of color, theme, and quality of text with “hard” criteria like number of pages, download time, number of images, number of links, and whether or not the site was developed by a third party. Ask groups to discuss and define their ratings. Spokesperson from group to report to class on ratings (discuss groups’ lists).
Break the class into small groups. Show a couple of basic network commands to illustrate IP addresses and routing. Ask your network administrator what addresses on the LAN you can use to ping. Ping will show how many packets it is sending, how big they are, and how long they take to get to and from the target. On a LAN, this may only be a few milliseconds, but when you ping an Internet host, you may see delays of a second or more. Have groups discuss what they saw and if they have more to add. Have a team spokesperson report to class on their findings (discuss groups’ list).
Break into small groups. Assign a subject, to groups, and have them search the Web with a different search engine. Ask the groups to report and compare speed, nmber of "hits," top matches, and flexibility or usability. Discuss the groups findings.