One of the goals of this course is to experiment with the tools now available on the Internet for managing discussion and carrying on conversations. Today, historians and other scholars carry-on continuous conversations that involve personal interaction (such as we will have in our class meetings), the formal written or presented communication of conferences, articles and books (such as we will have with our papers, reviews, and presentations), and continuous email or news-list conversations over the Internet. Where once historians often wrote long letters to each other over long distances and considerable time, today we write shorter much more frequent commentaries in email or message format.
Each form of communication has its own style and conventions designed to enhance understanding and create a sense of community. Email and messaging such as we will do for this course depends on relatively short communications usually of no more than two screens long (perhaps the equivalent of two double spaced typewritten pages). If we have many complicated ideas to express in email, we generally try to break them up and send separate messages. This format comes from the physical limitations of the computer screen and the relative inconvenience of scrolling up and down through long email messages. For those unaccustomed to email, the style takes some practice. Email is a cross between a memo and a telephone conversation. It is much less formal than a memo or letter but more formal than a phone message. We read email as if it were text, not spoken words, and so we need to always be careful that what we write will convey what we mean when read. Jokes and other witty humor often does not play well in print, and so we need to be careful when we think we're being funny lest we end up being offensive.
Courtesy and respect for those who will read our messages provide the basis for effective electronic communication, and in our class we have a special obligation to learn how to talk about history in ways that contribute to our understanding rather than demonstrate our ruthless critical spirit. Criticism is easy, but contributions that improve the quality of a conversation are much harder.
Electronic communication requires familiarity with and an ability to use the tools of the trade. For this class we use the following tools. They are available in the computer labs around campus in one form or another. Those who have made the jump into the computer age and have their own machines connected to the University of Florida network (or for that matter any Internet-enabled system) probably already own these tools.
Computer:
It does not matter what brand you have (Apple Macintosh or PC). It needs to have the hardware to connect to the Internet either via hard wired network connection (computer lab or some residence halls) or via a modem connected to a telephone line with access to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The University of Florida NERDC is an ISP, and you can get a free student account for this class that enables you to do the work of the class for this semester. You can get commercial Internet access for about $20 per month or less.
Browser:
A browser is a software program that permits you to use the connection you establish with the Internet to browse through the many places or sites connected to the Internet. There are many browsers on the market but the most popular are Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Either one will work for this class.
Mail:
A mail program is software that sends and receives electronic mail, keeps track of addresses for people you talk with frequently, and performs other housekeeping services to manage your electronic mail. Electronic mail capabilities come with almost all browsers. Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer have capable email systems. Other email systems available to you will be Eudora, Pine, and Rice Mail. All of these systems are similar, but they have different bells and whistles that make people love or hate them. For our class, the email facilities associated with your browser are probably good enough, but if you have other email software, you are welcome to use it. Our class web site has a link to a manual that describes some email systems in more detail (Using Electronic Mail on Four Platforms).
Accounts:
Every student needs two accounts. The first, an Internet account, gives you access to the Internet through the University of Florida or another ISP. This account will be set up for you and you will get an account number and a password if you use the University of Florida network. The second, a HyperNews account, gives you access to our class discussion groups. You cannot participate in our class discussion groups unless you have an account for the HyperNews software.
You will use your Internet account to dial up and log onto the Internet, and then you will use your HyperNews account when participating in the discussion groups. Whenever you participate in the discussions, the software will ask for your HyperNews account information so that we are sure it is you participating. You will need to keep track of your passwords and usernames or userid's for each of these two accounts. There will be a different pair for each account. If you forget them, we can issue you new ones, but it's a pain and a delay.
Writing to the Class--Writing to Individuals
We have two ways we can exchange messages. When we write to the class to comment on the discussion topics and contribute to the convesation, we use HyperNews and post to the discussion forum. Everyone registered for this class can read what we write, and this is what the HyperNews system does for us. When we write to the instructor or to any other individual with an Internet address, we use email on our Internet account, not HyperNews. Email is individual, and only goes to those whose addresses you enter. When you look at web pages, you will often see an entry that looks like this: mailto:lombardi@nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu. When you click on this entry, your browser will usually take you to an email screen where you can enter the rest of your message and send an email to the individual whose address follows the mailto: reference. I will use email to talk to each of you when you have individual questions about the course, and you can use email to me for questions and issues related to the course or anything else. When we want to talk with the class, however, we will use HyperNews.
Schedule:
Electronic communication imposes its own discipline on all of us who use it. Messages arrive instantly and need to be answered within a day or two. For this class you must participate in the discussions each week, and if you don't participate, when the week ends, you will lose your chance to participate as we archive that week's discussion and go to the next one. The class structure assumes that you will spend time logged on and participating, but to use this technology effectively you need to log on regularly, read what others have written, and contribute your part to the conversation. It is a different way to communicate if you haven't worked in email before, but once you get the hang of it, you will like it.
email: Also e-mail. Email is electronic messaging that uses standard conventions for addressing and delivering across the Internet. An email message has two parts: a header and a message. Sometimes an email message has a third part that carries attached documents or computer readable files along with the message. The header contains much technical information about the source and route the message took from sender to recipient. Most of this is irrelevant to normal users, but it is useful to have when things go wrong.
The most important part of the message is the address of the recipient. This address conforms in almost all cases to the Internet standard for email addresses. This standard has a two part address. The first part is the username by which your recipient is known at her ISP site. If you have an account at UF with the username lombardi, that's the first part of the address to reach lombardi. The second part of the address begins with the at sign @ followed by your ISP's computer address. At UF my computer's address is nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu and my username is lombardi, so my address for email is lombardi@nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu.
You can also enter addresses in the header for other people who will get carbon copies of your messages, but the most important information is this address of your recipient. When you send your message your own two-part address will automatically be included in the header so your recipient can know where to write you back.
Home page: This is the location of the first page in a series of related pages and Internet links and is what you see when your browser reaches the start of a site. For the University of Florida, and many other major sites, the home page has a URL (see definition below) that looks like this: http://www.ufl.edu. However, this home page provides links to many other home pages and sites at the University of Florida, so the home page for our class site has a URL that looks like this: http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~his3930. Generally speaking, when site names are put in web page documents like this you can click on them and jump to these sites. You can then come back here with the Back button on your browser, or go on to other sites and home pages as you like.
HTML and HTML tags: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) refers to a standard series of tags or special characters that browsers use to know how to display the contents of a web page. Centering, formatting, fonts, colors, columns, tables, and similar text and graphics elements depend on HTML tags for their appearance on the web page. Tags begin with the less-than symbol, followed by a code such as U for underline, and end with the greater-than symbol. This tag for underlining would appear as follows underlined text on the web page. In HyperNews you will see references to using or not using HTML. It is best to not use HTML for our class comments. In HyperNews, you enter either in smart text (which automatically wraps text to the next line) or plain text (for which you must enter a carriage return to get to the next line). You should probably use Smart text so that others can read your messages on different sized screens with the lines wrapped automatically.
HyperNews: This is a software program that manages discussion groups. It handles a range of materials and creates secure discussion areas that only members can use. HyperNews also has utilities to manage user names and passwords and to activate and archive discussion groups. We are experimenting with this software this semester.
Internet: The Internet is an endlessly expandable and connected cluster of computers that exists on a global basis. The Internet is the wires that connect these machines, the machines themselves, and the materials on those computers. The Internet is the physical connection of these computers, but it is even more the agreement about the standards that everyone will use to communicate with each other. As a result of the agreement about the standards, every computer that accepts the standards and is connected to the physical wires becomes a part of the Internet.
The standards includes rules for naming computers on the Internet (all of which are registered). Our computer name is nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu. (The standard tells us that nersp is the name of the specific machine, nerdc is the large organization to which this machine belongs, ufl is the institution that manages nerdc, and edu tells us that ufl is an educational institution.) Other names end in com for commercial, org for other not-for-profit organizations, gov for governmental.
The naming conventions are not uniform world wide. Other countries use last item for a country designator (uk for United Kingdom, for example). People use the Internet for many purposes in addition to showing pages of information viewed with a browser. The Internet carries data and other commercial and technical information.
ISP: Internet Service Provider. This is a business that provides access to the Internet. To get access you must establish an electronic connection to the Internet, and most individuals do not want to spend the time and money required to become directly and permanently connected to the wires that are the Internet. An ISP has a computer and other hardware to connect to the Internet and communication hardware to receive your calls or your connection. Then the ISP connects you to the Internet whenever you want or need this connection.
You can get to an ISP by any one of a number of ways, although the most common is by means of dialing up the phone company. Your computer will have a modem that plugs into the phone system. Your computer will dial the phone number of the ISP. The ISP will have a modem which answers the phone and negotiates an electronic connection between your computer and the ISP computer. Once this is done, the ISP computer simply passes your Browser's commands on to the Internet and passes back the Internet's responses to your browser.
ISP's charge a fee for this service that ranges from $10 a month for a fixed number of hours of connect time, to about $20 a month for unlimited connect time via a modem, and then to much more for very high speed commercial accounts. NERDC is an ISP for UF faculty, staff, and students.
NERDC: NorthEast Regional Data Center. This organization at UF manages the campus network and most of the computer connections to the outside world and the Internet. It is the primary ISP for the campus although other campus organizations also have connections to the Internet where their usage justifies the expense. NERDC maintains a variety of computer support but for our purposes it is the home of the computer whose name is NERSP and serves as the host computer for HyperNews and our email.
Site: Every location on the Internet is a site and has a standardized URL that identifies the site. A site may be as simple as one document or web page on an Internet-connected computer or as complicated as the many web pages that belong to the IBM or Microsoft site. Sites are composed of Web pages, each of which has it's own, unique URL.
URL: Universal Resource Locator. The URL is a standard address for web pages. Every individual web page has its own URL which permits the browser to find that page. URL's are often included in web pages to refer to other web pages, and your browser will pick up the URL and go to the page, wherever in the world it's located.
The URL has the following general format:
http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/home/lombardi/index.html
The meaning of this URL is as follows:
http: = tells your browser that this web page conforms to the standards for hypertext markup language. Your browser then knows what to do with the symbols it encounters on this page.
//nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu = is the site address which identifies the computer where the page exists.
/home/lombardi = is the account location where the page exists.
/index.html = the name of the page that has been prepared in accord with the standards of a hypertext markup language document.
The combined URL is unique for this page, and no other page can have this combination.
There are other conventions that identify different types of Internet documents or pages or locations, but the pages that the browser uses are, for the most part, http: pages. When the URL appearing on a web page is live, it will be highlighted in a different color. Then you can click on that URL and your browser will take you to that home page. The following web page URL is live and takes you to the home page of our class site: http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~his3930/.
Web: This is another name for the Internet, but usually refers to that part of the traffic on the Internet that produces pages that can be seen with a browser. Browsers are sometimes called Web browsers because they search throughout the Web for pages that can be displayed. In conventional parlance, the web is officially known as the World Wide Web, and the initials WWW stand for the materials that we can see using browsers that exist on computers connected to the Internet. Often the home page of major sites have an address of the form: http://www/ufl/edu.