Introduction to the Internet

led by Helen Whitehead
trAce Online Writing Community
http://trace.ntu.ac.uk

 

What might you use the Internet for?

as a reader?

  • Contacting friends, relatives (grandchildren in Australia), or work contacts all over the word. Email
  • Exchanging documents and other files electronically (articles for the church newsletter, pictures of the wedding)
  • Web - finding information (what's on locally, homework on the Egyptians), entertainment (games), shopping
  • Online communities
  • Your own Webpages

as a writer?

  • Contacting other writers and collaborators, publishers, readers: Email
  • Sending your work electronically
  • Web - research
  • Workshopping
  • Online communities
  • Publishing your work on the Web

All of these things work in slightly different ways, but all can be achieved nowadays using the World-Wide Web.

 

 

 

 

 

Search & Research

  • Metacrawler http://metacrawler.com -- searches lots of search engines at once
  • Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com -- a directory of categorized sites
  • Altavista http://www.altavista.com -- very comprehensive
  • Google http://www.google.com -- current favourite for accuracy

Be as specific as possible, or you will get millions of hits!

Not Fungi but Dictyostelium (slime mould)

Don't include unnecessary words (e.g., papers about fungi) unless they are part of the search term.

Use plus and minus signs to force a word to be included or excluded, and use quote marks to look for a phrase. e.g., to find the English writer called Elizabeth Taylor, search for

+"Elizabeth Taylor" -movie -film -actress +writer +British

The other way to find information especially if you're not sure what you want, or have very general needs is to surf, to start with a web site and use their links page to move to other related sites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Online communities

trAce

WebBoard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Publishing your own web pages

Just as you can have free email and access to online communities, there are places (often the same ones) which will host your web pages for free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Web

The Web is a tool, for research, communication, and workshopping, but it is also a medium in its own right. Use some of your time to browse the web, looking at some of the wonderful sites that writers have produced, individually and in collaboration, including

  • the trAce Noon Quilt (http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/quilt/quilt_1.htm)
  • A Gallery Showing (http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sanford/program.html) of sites produced by participants in an online trAce Web Writing Workshop
  • trAced (http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/traced/traced.htm) - a list of interesting writers' sites collected by Andy Oldfield
  • Introduction to hypertext (http://ds.dial.pipex.com/h.whitehead/hyper/intro.html)

There are lots of ezines which accept work by email. Most don't pay, but there are some paying markets on the Web! Whatever you write - short stories, poetry, essays - you can probably find a place to showcase it. It isn't unheard of for editors to commission work from writers they've read on the web.

 

Internet for Writers