Week 1. Learning the Internet.

08/28/95
Curtis Nakao
Psy. 409
Dr. James

Section 2.

How difficult was this week's task?

Very easy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very hard
This week's rating= 2

How much negative emotions did it cost you, all in all?

Very little 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very much
This week's rating= 2

How valuable for later use is this knowledge or skill going to be for you?

Not useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very useful
This week's rating= 9

How likely is it that you'll be getting good at this week's tasks?

Not likely 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very likely
This week's rating= 9

How Satisfied are you with the computer and Internet systems?

Not satisfied 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very satisfied
This week's rating= 7

How hard did you try to get through this week's tasks?

Gave up 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Refused to give up
This week's rating= 9

Section 3.

The first week's tasks were not especially difficult. All the buttons are right there on the screen, unless that option is not chosen to begin with then you must turn them on using the options directory, and all that you have to do is point and click. Unlike the "cool stuff" and "what's new" buttons, where your choices are presented to you on the screen, the search button takes you to a site that allows you to choose the topic that you are looking for.

The one problem with the search functions is that most of the time you end up with a lot of material that has absolutely nothing to do with what you are specifically looking for. Infoseek does have an option that will allow you to eliminate some of the unwanted material, it gives you special hints and instructions on how to make a better query.

Webcrawler is very similar to Infoseek although I think that webcrawler has a little better grasp on the initial query.

Lycos might be the better of the three because not only does it list the potential sites but it also gives you a short synopsis of the site itself. So if a particular site seems questionable, you are able to take a peek at what is inside before you go there.

The net directory comes in handy if you do not want to navigate using a query. It gives you a list of options, Yahoo, Cool Stuff, etc... and instead of trying to think of a search, you just have to pick a topic.

No negative emotions this week, thank god, but that may all change in the weeks to come.

These searching skills are going to come in very handy if I need to find something. I'll know where to go in order to hopefully find some information. If I can possibly memorize the special syntax and punctuation to narrow down my searches, that will make it even easier.

With the exception, for now, of the special syntax and punctuation I should be able to find almost anything that I need.

Except for the fact that the computer that I use home is slow and outdated, I feel pretty satisfied with everything that has gone on so far. I would like to see Internet become a little more precise but there is nothing that I can really do about that.

I feel that I tried hard to search through as many different sites as I could, and I found some very interesting ones: The Clint Eastwood Home Page, The Umma Thurman Home Page, and the Rush Fan club Home Page.

This week there were no real noticeable differences within the sub-tasks that were given probably due the previously mentioned ease use. Each area did take you to a different site where you could choose different areas to go to.

I don't really know if you would consider finding some of the same sites in different searches a fossilized error but I felt that not really being able to find specific subjects did make me feel a little lacunae.

I think that in order to try to overcome my inadequacies, I would need to spend a lot more time on the computer trying different things and learning from my mistakes. ( And future mistakes.) I also feel that learning the special hints, that I had linked to previously, would be a tremendous aid in accurately surfing the web.

This being the first week of trying all the different types of searches, I do not think that there are really very many trends that I have fallen into. Although I do tend to spend a lot of time on the web looking for my favorite actors, actresses, and sports. Well, maybe this is a sort of trend.

As far as progression goes, I do find it a bit easier to navigate now that I am slowly learning the query techniques that can narrow down my searches.

I think that in order to really be able to navigate around in Netscape you would need a pretty fast computer. Some of the ones in the Clic lab are a little slow. ( The IBM's anyway. ) 33 MHz. should be the minimum to use if you want the results to come in faster and probably even a faster modem, maybe 28,800 bps.

The Mac's are pretty easy to use but I do not feel very comfortable using them. A lot of the commands are different and the screen set-up looks strange. They are faster than the old IBM's so I'll use them instead. Unless of course I get my new computer or I get to use one of the newer machines.

I would like to do some web-surfing from home but my roommate's computer just will not hook up to UNIX properly. I do not know what is happening. I guess I will have to bribe one of my computer expert friends to try and help me figure out what is wrong.

Because this was my first encounter with Netscape, I thought that I might have a difficult time trying to find anything on the Internet. But after looking it over and then trying out a few a searches, I found out that it might not be so difficult after all. I might run into a few problems here and there but I should be able to get through them.

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