Day 2

:: Day1 :: Day2 :: Day3 :: Day4 :: Day5 :: Day6 :: Day7 :: Day8:: Day9:: Day10 ::

Lesson 2

Ok, so I threw you to the wolves a little bit yesterday. Not only did I give you homework, I tossed search engines into the mix and we hadn’t even talked about search engines yet. So, now that you’ve stretched yourself a little bit, let’s discuss search engines.

A search engine is a tool that everyone uses to find information on the internet. It’s kind of like a phone book for webpages. If you want to find websites about a particular subject, you just type a few keywords into the search engine and click the search button. The serach engine will return many little blue links to various websites about whatever keywords you entered.

Once upon a time there were many search engines. The leader of the pack was found at www.yahoo.com. There are still many search engines. However, a little company called Google came along. They introduced a very simple and very accurate search engine at www.google.com. It guickly overtook Yahoo as the leader of the pack. I hope you took the time to use the Google search engine yesterday. If not, feel free to go back to Day 1 and complete the homework assignment

Note 2.0

Typing the phrase model airplanes will return results for the words model, airplanes, and model airplanes. If you enclose your search in quotation marks like this, “model airplanes”, the search engine will look for an exact match and only search for model airplanes.

(Anything marked with Note 2.0 is an advanced topic that you don’t need to know, but you might find interesting.)

The next benefit of being online that we will discuss is e-mail. I imagine you’ve heard of e-mail. It’s like sending a letter without using paper. You can type your message and send it directly to someone. There are two types of software that handles your e-mail. One is a program that is installed on your computer like Microsoft Outlook. The other type of e-mail software is hosted entirely on the internet. This means that you can use your browser to navigate to their page and login to your e-mail account. The biggest benefit to this is that you can check web-based e-mail anywhere that has an internet connection.

We’re going to set up a simple e-mail account for you. To keep this simple and consistant for everyone reading this, we are going to open a web-based e-mail account through Goggle’s free e-mail service called Gmail. I use Gmail myself.

You may need to print or write down these instructions:

1. Go to www.gmail.com
2. Click the “Create an account >>” button
3. Fill out the information on the next page
4. IMPORTANT! Write down your username and password
5. Click the “I accept. Create my account.” button
6. Click the “Show me my account >>” button
7. Right under the colorful Gmail logo, click the “Compost Mail” link
8. In the “To:” field, type thefirstplacetogo@gmail.com
9. In the “Subject:” field, type DAY 2 LESSON
10. Click in the big open white space
11. Type a short message just like you would type a letter
12. Click the “Send” button

You just set up your own e-mail account and sent your first e-mail! I am proud of you! That by itself qualifies you as an entry level citizen of the internet, or netizen.

Now it’s time for…

Homework

I would like you to send a e-mail to someone else you know. You may have to call them in order to get their e-mail address. Write it down and read it back to them. The e-mail addres MUST have the @ symbol and a dot (the period punctuation mark) in it. The e-mail address must NOT have any spaces in it.

Once you have completed this homework, leave a short comment below about who you e-mailed. Please do not put their e-mail address in your comment. I’m sure they don’t want a bunch of strangers sending them e-mail.

Wrap Up

You can now navigate the internet, use a search engine, and send e-mail. Most everything else you do online will be an extension of these three things. You’ve come a long way in two days. I wonder what tomorrow will hold for you?