WEB FOR BEGINNERS

Here's a great page with a basic tutorial from University of California at Berkeley.  It offers the online version of their internet classes. You can learn everything from how to use an online browser to searching skills and resources.  It's an all-in-one stop for learning how to navigate the web as a reporter.

• Online research is great, but if you get information off your computer or an online service, SECOND SOURCE IT! Check to see if the information is correct.  Information can be withdrawn and altered in subsequent editions of newspapers, and electronic errors tend to live forever, because they are so quickly passed on.  Although the New York Times stories that go onto the search engine, Lexis-Nexis, are checked against each day's final edition, they are not checked after that.  Many other publications do not have ANY safeguards to ensure that a story which appears on a search engine is the same one that appears in final print.

• If your computer is not powerful or it takes a long time loading images, or if you simply want to conduct a text search, you can surf the internet without loading images. Images do take the longest time to load and can slow down your search, although they make it more interesting. To just surf text, go to the "load images" square at the top of your screen and click "off".

• When a site comes up on your screen, scroll to the bottom to see when it was last updated. Many sites on the Web, even government sites, are months (or sometimes years!) old, and contain stale information. The bottom of the page often gives the address of the person who prepared the site, and you can usually click on this address to email them directly if you have further questions. Getting bored yet?  Here's a little hot rod break: 

• Le Web n’est pas seulement en Anglais. In other words, you will find sites in German, French, Spanish, Swahili, and any number of languages. If you want to search only in English, engines like Alta Vista will let you limit the search by language.

HAPPY PROWLING!