**[PÉCS WORKSHOP NOTES]{.underline}**

-   Access a pre-selected collection of high-quality websites, suitable
    for instruction in a variety of content areas. Browse the Internet
    to find sites within your particular professional area of interest
    and appropriate for your students or trainees.

-   Explore new pedagogical frameworks by reading landmark articles
    published by expert teachers in the field. These web-based articles
    are linked to on-line activities and lesson plans, providing
    immediate access to contextualized examples which support the
    principles presented in the readings.

-   Design and create web pages in a variety of activity formats which
    are directly applicable to your individual teaching/training
    situations. No special software or access to Internet server space
    is needed.

-   Enhance your ability to find appropriate resources on the Internet
    quickly and efficiently, and to teach your students these same
    skills.

-   Examine different models for evaluating the quality and credibility
    of Internet sites so that you and your students can differentiate
    the \"treasures\" from the \"trash,\" both of which abound on the
    Internet.

-   Observe and evaluate numerous web-based activities and courses which
    are currently in use to see how theory has been applied to practice.

-   Review telecommunications projects which involve students from
    across the nation and around the globe in interactive,
    technology-enhanced activities, and consider how your
    students/trainees might participate in those projects.

-   Enhance your learning by participating in electronic discussions of
    course assignments with your colleagues and instructor, utilizing a
    web-based bulletin board, a superior tool for sharing information
    and Web links.

Tapped In \<<http://www.tappedin.org/new>\> and Yahoo Messenger
\<[http://messenger.yahoo.com](http://messenger.yahoo.com/)\> are two
Web-based chat tools with different scopes and audiences. While Tapped
In caters to a more specific and restricted group - people from the
world of education - Yahoo Messenger is targeted at the general public.
Nevertheless, it can provide a level of privacy similar to that in a
cyber office at Tapped In by enabling private conferences to which
guests are invited, thus avoiding the danger of undesirable
interferences. From a user standpoint, Tapped In is free and easy to log
into without need to install software. Yahoo Messenger is easy to
download, install, log into and use.

<http://library.albany.edu/internet/>

  --------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------
  ![](media/image1.png){width="4.739583333333333in"   ![](media/image2.png){width="0.8006944444444445in"   ![](media/image3.png){width="1.0409722222222222in"   ![](media/image4.png){width="0.7076388888888889in"
  height="0.46875in"}                                 height="0.4673611111111111in"}                       height="0.4673611111111111in"}                       height="0.4673611111111111in"}

  --------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------

  ---------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------
  ![](media/image5.png){width="3.1256944444444446in"   ![](media/image6.png){width="0.8125in"   ![](media/image7.png){width="1.3319444444444444in"   ![](media/image8.png){width="0.8548611111111111in"   ![](media/image9.png){width="1.1666666666666667in"
  height="0.18888888888888888in"}                      height="0.18888888888888888in"}          height="0.18888888888888888in"}                      height="0.18888888888888888in"}                      height="0.18888888888888888in"}

  ---------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------

# Internet Tutorials

[What\'s New on Internet
Tutorials](http://library.albany.edu/internet/whatsnew.html)

[Using and Searching the
Web](http://library.albany.edu/internet/#using%23using) \|
[Browsers](http://library.albany.edu/internet/#browsers%23browsers) \|
[Software
Training](http://library.albany.edu/internet/#software%23software)

[Search Tool of the
Month](http://library.albany.edu/internet/searchnet.html#searchtool)

### Using and Searching the Web

#### BASIC INTERNET

[A Basic Guide to the
Internet](http://library.albany.edu/internet/internet.html)

> A brief discussion of the Internet and its components

[How to Connect to the
Internet](http://library.albany.edu/internet/connect.html)

> A chart of options, questions to ask a prospective Internet Service
> Provider, and a list of ISPs in the 518 area code

[Understanding the World Wide
Web](http://library.albany.edu/internet/www.html)

> A discussion of the major protocols that make up the Web, the makeup
> of URLs, browsers and plug-ins, multimedia, Web programming languages
> and more

#### RESEARCH GUIDES

[Checklist of Internet Research
Tips](http://library.albany.edu/internet/checklist.html)

> A collection of tips in a cogent format, with an emphasis on the use
> of subject directories and search engines

[Conducting Research on the
Internet](http://library.albany.edu/internet/research.html)

> Advice on using e-mail discussion groups, Usenet news, and basic
> recommendations on the use of subject directories and search engines
> with tips on conducting searches

[Evaluating Internet
Resources](http://library.albany.edu/internet/evaluate.html)

> Strategies for evaluating resources found on the Internet

#### SEARCH ENGINES, SUBJECT DIRECTORIES & THE DEEP WEB

[Getting Started: Selecting a Tool for Your
Search](http://library.albany.edu/internet/started.html)

> A chart listing general query types and the kinds of search tools that
> support them

[Boolean Searching on the
Internet](http://library.albany.edu/internet/boolean.html)

> The principles of search logic and the different manifestations of
> this logic on Web search engines

[The Deep Web](http://library.albany.edu/internet/deepweb.html)

> A tutorial describing this newsworthy phenomenon: what it is, what to
> call it, tips for dealing with it, and how to locate its content

[How to Choose a Search Engine or
Directory](http://library.albany.edu/internet/choose.html)

> A chart listing numerous features and the search engines & directories
> that support them

[Searching the Internet: Recommended Sites and Search
Techniques](http://library.albany.edu/internet/search.html)

> An extensive tutorial on the use of subject directories, search engine
> services, and the \"deep\" Web. This tutorial covers Google, Ask
> Jeeves, BUBL LINK, Ixquick and Yahoo

[Second Generation Searching on the
Web](http://library.albany.edu/internet/second.html)

> Tips on precision searching using features available on second
> generation search services. This tutorial covers Teoma, Ixquick,
> SurfWax and TracerLock

### Browsers

#### Internet Explorer

[Using Internet Explorer 6](http://library.albany.edu/internet/ie.html)

> A guide to the major features of the Microsoft browser

[How to Copy and Paste from a Web Page to Windows
WordPad](http://library.albany.edu/internet/wordpad.html)

> How to save portions of a Web page to a text editor; these
> instructions will work with most browsers

#### Lynx

[Guide to Using Lynx](http://library.albany.edu/internet/lynx.html)

> How to use this text-only Web browser

### Software Training

[How to Capture a Graphic on the Web to a
Diskette](http://library.albany.edu/internet/capture.html)

> A quick guide on saving Web graphics for your own use

[How to Use WS_FTP](http://library.albany.edu/internet/ws_ftp.html)

> Tips for using this Windows-based software that transfers files
> between a local and a remote computer

Updated: September 2004

All tutorials maintained by: [Laura
Cohen](mailto:lcohen@uamail.albany.edu?subject=Internet Tutorials),
Library Web Administrator

Welcome to TNO 1(5).

This issue includes an article by Arun Mehta about the role

of [electronic mail in global non-profit
organizations](http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/tno/may-1994.html#role%23role)
such as

Amnesty International. Democracy means including everyone in

making the decisions, and maybe we can become more democratic by

learning how to use e-mail as part of running our organizations.

You have to get together in person eventually, of course, so it\'s

a matter of finding the arrangement of work that makes the most

of the scarce and valuable travel resources available to people

who aren\'t affiliated with elite institutions.

Also in this issue is another how-to, this time addressed to

computer people who find themselves involved in [helping
others](http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/tno/may-1994.html#how%23how)

to use computers. Much \"helping\" does more harm than good, but a

few simple guidelines can make a huge difference in how much the

person learns by being helped and whether his or her self-esteem

is supported or warped by the experience.

Finally, I\'ve included a longish meditation on the metaphor

of [\"cyberspace\" as a kind of
\"frontier\"](http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/tno/may-1994.html#cyberspace%23cyberspace).
As networks spread

in our communities, it becomes much more reasonable to adopt

different metaphors that describe the multiple and complicated

intersections between the network and the rest of the world.

\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--

Cyberspace turned inside out.

It\'s common to refer to the net as a \"frontier\". With all due

respect to the good works of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,

I find this metaphor unfortunate. It draws upon a whole set

of myths of the Old West: the idea that the West was empty when

the Europeans found it, the idea that the West was developed by

rugged entrepreneurs without the assistance or intervention of

the government, the notion that the West needed to be civilized,

and so forth. The electronic frontier is not something we find;

it\'s something we make. And it\'s not someplace far away; it\'s

right here in front of us. The term \"cyberspace\" is unfortunate

for the same reason; the net is not a separate space, different

in kind from other spaces, sealed off from the corporeal world

and obeying different laws.

To counteract this notion of cyberspace as a higher and purer

dimension of reality, I think it\'s useful to investigate the

ways in which the net interpenetrates the more conventional

geographies of societies and communities. I\'ve had the chance

to do just that over the last month in my role as program chair

of the CPSR Annual Meeting, which will be held in San Diego on

October 8th and 9th of this year. (The formal announcement of

this meeting will be ready soon.) For this year\'s meeting, we

want to look at the ways in which socially responsible computer

people can work with their communities, and particularly with the

professionals whose job it is to use information for the good of

those communities \-- librarians, educators, public health people,

community organizers, and so forth.

Unfortunately, the university where I work, UC San Diego, is both

physically and socially isolated from the community of San Diego.

Certain parts of the university have extensive ties to the elite

networks of business and government in the region, but my sense

is that most folks in San Diego have only the vaguest idea what

UCSD is. That\'s partly because UCSD is on a mesa in the middle

of a wealthy neighborhood ten miles north of downtown. But it\'s

also partly because of the institutional barriers that separate

universities from American society in general.

Organizing this meeting, then, has been a fine opportunity to

call around town and find out what people are doing with computer

networks. Even though San Diego does not have a community

networking movement as such, nonetheless I began to get a sense

of a community starting, in a decentralized way, to hum with

networks:

\* San Diego, for example, has about 1100 BBS\'s (computer

bulletin boards), a substantial portion of which can exchange

messages with one another.

\* Attempts are being made, some of them with the help of

the San Diego Computer Society, to get community councils and

neighborhood watch groups and the like onto BBS\'s.

\* The BBS\'s are used intensively by local military people to

exchange information on the practical details of life in the

military.

\* Several commercial Internet service providers are in

operation.

\* The colleges and universities are all on the Internet, as are

many high-tech companies. The school district is ethernetting

all its middle schools to the district office.

\* The local World Trade Center is about to connect to a global

network of its counterparts.

\* The local Catholic Charities long operated a BBS to coordinate

the work of public and private social service agencies in the

county; the county government is installing a higher-technology

network to carry on this work.

The list goes on. Part of what\'s so impressive about it is the

complicated and remarkably seamless mix of initiative: individual

volunteers, non-profit organizations, businesses selling access

to the net, businesses using networks to do their business,

schools and universities, the military, and so forth. And it\'s

not a frontier anywhere; it\'s just San Diego being San Diego.

One manifestation of this interconnection is the success of a

speakers\' series we organized this spring in order to stir up

interest in the annual meeting. The series\' publicist, Dave

Noelle, did marvelous work making posters and sending them around

to newspapers in the usual way, but we also attracted quite a

few people through e-mail messages that had gotten passed along

through the city\'s networks. Furthermore, I was surprised to

discover that several of our audience members had heard of me

through the simple Internet facilities I operate in a couple

spare hours a week.

This is obviously a very small beginning, but it contrasts

mightily with my experience the first fifteen years I was on the

Internet (some of them, obviously, before it was even called the

Internet). In those early days, I was a member of the world of

academic computer research, mostly as a graduate student at an

elite laboratory funded by the US military. I and my cohort of

fellow net users thought of ourselves as simultaneously central

and peripheral: being at MIT and places like that, we were

obviously central to something. Yet our research was so \"pure\",

and so few concrete demands were ever placed on us, that we

could think of ourselves as wholly inconsequential. We could do

absolutely whatever we pleased on the net, perfectly confident

that none of it would have any consequences in the real world \--

the world where people have real jobs, go broke, get sued, get

elected, get fired, and so forth. All of this is changing, of

course, and I think that a lot of the shock and horror that these

changes are evoking have their origin in this particular kind of

relationship to the world \-- privileged yet detached, central yet

isolated, plugged in yet disconnected.

This is not to say that I approve of each of the manifestations

of the Internet\'s sudden intersection with its surrounding

reality. Massively broadcast advertisements, large-scale flame

wars, exclusion of outsiders from mailing lists, vandalism (as

opposed to good clean hacking), lawsuits filed over net messages,

and so forth are all unfortunate. But they are not unfortunate

because they represent invasions of a pure, disembodied nirvana.

They\'re just unfortunate in the same way as war and rudeness and

reaction and greed are unfortunate. They obey the same laws,

they are part of the same system, and they are all part of us,

just as we are part of them. To heal them is not to defend a

siege but rather to heal the world in which we live.

But the ideology of cyberspace is not restricted to these ideas

about the Internet. I think that it reflects something much

deeper, something that I have heard David Noble call \"masculine

transcendentalism\". It\'s a sort of spiritual system. We

might, schematizing outrageously, try contrasting two types of

spirituality: immanent and transcendental. Immanent spirituality

seeks connection with the fullness of things as they are: most

often with nature, though conceptions differ. Transcendental

spirituality seeks to rise above things as they are and to purify

the self by leaving behind corporeal reality, and particularly

the human body, for a higher and more abstract reality. These

kinds of spiritual practice are very roughly gender-coded,

with immanent spirituality often being associated with women\'s

practices such as witchcraft and transcendent spirituality often

being associated with men\'s practices such as certain types of

ascetic meditation. These assignments are obviously far from

iron-clad, but nonetheless they can take on great force within

the context of particular cultures.

In tracing the emergence of science, Noble suggests that the

urge toward mathematization in science is structured as a variety

of masculine transcendentalism: the urge to raise reality to

a higher and purer plane. Be this as it may (and I do believe

that it has a great deal of truth to it), his theory applies

alarmingly well to the fantasy-systems around computers. The

fantasies around virtual reality, for example, are textbook

cases of masculine transcendentalism: the escape from the body

to an alternative world which is perfectly orderly, perfectly

under control, and perfectly responsive to the gestures of

its inhabitants. Gibson\'s Neuromancer, which has provided the

vocabulary for a great deal of such fantasizing, was written

precisely as a critique of this fantasy-system. (In fact, he

says, in an interview in the San Francisco Bay Guardian that

I have lost, that he was motivated to write the book by D. H.

Lawrence\'s literary celebrations of bodily pleasure as a way of

knowing the world.)

Cyberspace, too, is a form of masculine-transcendentalist fantasy

system. Note the easy confluence between the transcendentalism

and the metaphor-system of invasion and colonization implicit in

the metaphor of a \"frontier\". In each case, loosely connected

networks of militant individualists venture out to impose order

on previously unruly territories while simultaneously passing

beyond the former constraints of physical geography and social

entanglement. So long as this transition is incomplete, the

pioneer lives the dual lives described in Vernor Vinge\'s \"True

Names\": one of me grows out there in cyberspace while the other

of me atrophies down here in the world.

This is not to say that networks are useless. Far from it.

But in understanding their huge potential, I would urge us to

adopt a different set of metaphors, an immanent conception of the

net, that emphasizes the complex and multiform interweavings of

electronic community and geographic community, e-mail discussion

group and profession, database and landscape. We don\'t really

see these effects so long as participation in computer networking

is sparse: if you\'re the only person on your block that\'s on the

net then you will experience the net in one way; if \*everybody\*

on your block is on the net then you will experience the net

in another way. Every community learns its own way of carrying

on conversations in several media at once, and every individual

comes to terms with the digital dimension of his or her social

identity in his or her own particular way, with particular

strategies born of the thousand kinds of creativity and agency

that opportunity and adversity nurture within us. In the end,

all of us become \-- indeed, all of us already were \-- hybrids, or

cyborgs in Donna Haraway\'s vocabulary, living our lives in many

spaces at once.

\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--

How to help someone use a computer.

Computer people are generally fine human beings, but nonetheless

they do a lot of inadvertent harm in the ways they \"help\" other

people with their computer problems. Now that we\'re trying to

get everyone on the net, I thought it might be helpful to write

down in one place everything I\'ve been taught about how to help

people use computers.

First you have to tell yourself some things:

\* Nobody is born knowing this stuff.

\* You\'ve forgotten what it\'s like to be a beginner.

\* If it\'s not obvious to them, it\'s not obvious.

\* A computer is a means to an end. The person you\'re helping

probably cares mostly about the end. This is reasonable.

\* Their knowledge of the computer is grounded in what they can

do and see \-- \"when I do this, it does that\". They need to

develop a deeper understanding, of course, but this can only

happen slowly, and not through abstract theory but through

the real, concrete situations they encounter in their work.

\* By the time they ask you for help, they\'ve probably tried

several different things. As a result, their computer might

be in a strange state. That\'s not their fault.

\* The best way to learn is through apprenticeship \-- that is,

by doing some real task together with someone who has skills

that you don\'t have.

\* Your primary goal is not to solve their problem. Your primary

goal is to help them become one notch more capable of solving

their problem on their own. So it\'s okay if they take notes.

\* Most user interfaces are terrible. When people make mistakes

it\'s usually the fault of the interface. You\'ve forgotten how

many ways you\'ve learned to adapt to bad interfaces. You\'ve

forgotten how many things you once assumed that the interface

would be able to do for you.

\* Knowledge lives in communities, not individuals. A computer

user who\'s not part of a community of computer users is going

to have a harder time of it than one who is.

Having convinced yourself of these things, you are more likely to

follow some important rules:

\* Don\'t take the keyboard. Let them do all the typing, even

if it\'s slower that way, and even if you have to point them

to each and every key they need to type. That\'s the only way

they\'re going to learn from the interaction.

\* Find out what they\'re really trying to do. Is there another

way to go about it?

\* Attend to the symbolism of the interaction. Most especially,

try not to tower over them. If at all possible, squat down

so your eyes are just below the level of theirs. When they\'re

looking at the computer, look at the computer. When they\'re

looking at you, look back at them.

\* If something is true, show them how they can see it\'s true.

\* Be aware of how abstract your language is. For example, \"Get

into the editor\" is abstract and \"press this key\" is concrete.

Don\'t say anything unless you intend for them to understand

it. Keep adjusting your language downward towards concrete

units until they start to get it, then slowly adjust back up

towards greater abstraction so long as they\'re following you.

When formulating a take-home lesson (\"when it does this and

that, you should check such-and-such\"), check once again that

you\'re using language of the right degree of abstraction for

this user right now.

\* Whenever they start to blame themselves, blame the computer,

no matter how many times it takes, in a calm, authoritative

tone of voice. When they get nailed by a false assumption

about the computer\'s behavior, tell them their assumption was

reasonable. Tell \*yourself\* that it was reasonable. It was.

\* Never do something for someone that they are capable of doing

for themselves.

\* Don\'t say \"it\'s in the manual\". (You probably knew that.)