[Internet for Kids Balloon] This Web page is a companion to Internet for Kids (Sybex, 1995), a book of Internet activities. At the bottom of this page you will find jumps to the activities that appear in the book.

Grab your thinking cap, here we go; ride on your imagination to explore the whole world. There are a lot of places to explore. Whenever you see a hotspot (a different color or a place where the arrow on your screen changes shape) like the word "explore" in the previous sentence, you can click your mouse on it and you will jump to a new place on the Internet.

To make the most of your adventure, you need to:

These simple rules are basic Netiquette, a word made up from "NETwork" and "etIQUETTE." To read more about Netiquette, you can jump to Arlene Rinaldi's Netiquette page.

Help

If you are using NetCruiser, you will find additional help in exploring the Internet just by clicking on the big red question-mark icon at the upper left end of the icon toolbar. If you aren't using NetCruiser (or if you'd like to explore different approaches) try Internet Assistance.
[Smiling Satellite]

Mailing lists

After you've figured out how to read and send e-mail, you'll want to look at lists of mailing lists. Here are the lists maintained by SURANet. Nova University provides a search service for Bitnet and Internet Interest group mailing lists. The list itself is maintained at Dartmouth College on a Dartmouth gopher server. And the Institutt for Informatikk in Norway provides a server which searches Stephanie da Silva's Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists list PAML, which is also available in Usenet news in the news.answers newsgroup.

Gopher

You can use your Web browser to get to gopher holes, too. Here are some Internet for Kids examples. Just click on the hotspot, and you'll be there: With some gopher clients, you can see Professional Sports Schedules at Ball State University. Choose Ball State University, then choose Professional Sports Schedules. Other places to find sports information include The World Wide Web of Sports and The Satchel Sports Page.

Veronica is a search service that can help you by building a new gopher menu just for you. When you give Veronica a word, the program searches its indexes and shows you a list of hotspots with your word in them.

Telnet

Telnet connects your computer (the terminal) to another computer (the host). You then can give commands to the host. You need to have an account on the host. Public sites usually have accounts called "guest" or "newuser." Try those first. Follow the directions given by the system you are connected to.

Note: If your Web browser doesn't support telnet directly, you can open a telnet session and enter the name of the host. Sometimes you will see a number after the host name. That's the port number. It's like the extension number after a telephone number (you might need to dial extra numbers after reaching an office so you can talk to a person).

Try these:

Netnews

You can find lots and lots of people talking about thousands of topics in netnews newsgroups. Some popular ones for kids are misc.kids, rec.arts.movies, rec.arts.tv.soaps, and for junior high school students: k12.chat.junior. If your Web browser supports newsreading, just click to take a look. Otherwise you can use your newsreading software to choose these groups. After you've looked around through the newsgroups, you can decide which ones you are interested in reading and subscribe.

Transferring files with FTP

Just like its name sounds, the File Transfer Program (FTP) copies files from one computer to another. To try these great FTP sites, jump from these hotspots or open an anonymous FTP session to:

The Web itself

If you've used this page in order, you're already an experienced Web surfer. Here are the great Web sites used to illustrate the Web in Internet for Kids.

IRC

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a way for people logged in all over the world to send messages to each other. NetCruiser users should look at the Help system for instructions. Just click on the red question mark. You can find information about other clients in the newsgroup alt.irc or via the tutorials at Boston University.

MUDs

Another multi-user experience with people logged in from all over the world--Multi-User Dungeons. Try:

A few words about searching

If you already know what kind of information you want to find, you might try reading John December's Web pages about searching. He explains both word searching and subject searching with links to several tools that might work really well for you.

You're on your way!

The best way to learn is to try. Good luck, and good net cruising! On to the rest of the book.

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