Technical skills in Multimedia for ODL learners

Koloseni, DanielInstructor, Researcher and Consultant in ICT4E and Information SecurityThe Institute of Finance Management

General concepts• A browser : A computer program that enables

users of the internet to retrieve information from the WWW.

• WWW stands for World Wide Web which is one of the most important and widely accepted services(like E-Mail etc) of the Internet. Its popularity has increased dramatically, simply because it’s very easy to use, colorful, and rich in content. “

• Web is a series of interconnected documents stored on computer sites or websites

General concepts

• URL stands for Uniform/Universal Resource Locator.• URL is used to access the WWW.• All URL begins with http:// , http:/www or https: www.• Structure of URL: – The internet name of the site containing the resource

(document or data) – The type of service the resource is served by (eg, HTTP) – The location of the resource in the directory structure of

the server.

General concepts

• Internet is defined as network of networks. Or a global network of computers connected together to allow sharing of data and information.

Information Searching Techniques

• Things to take into account before you start searching: – Is your choice of search term is adequate, too restrictive

or too general? – Are you more interested in using a search engine that

merely returns all the web pages it has found containing the search term?

– Have you read the Search Help pages that most search pages offer?

– Bear in mind the fact that engines differ in their coverage of the Internet, their speed and whether they are largely compiled manually by people or automatically by 'robots' that scan the Internet.

Searching process

• Search strategy must include knowledge of how the search engine you have planned to use handles Boolean Logic and other similar search operators.

• For example AND,NOT, NEAR , “ word” and *.• Some, but not all search systems, are case-

specific for the upper case. • Correct spelling of search terms is vital, because

the search software looks for an exact match.

Searching process

• Most online databases and a large number of Internet search engines permit the search operators.

• These operators are used to define the relationship between the search terms that are being used.

• They act as commands to the search engine to specify how the sets of identified documents should be combined.

Other Operators

• + : used to specify words which must be present in the searched documents.

• Example: +distance + learning will only retrieve documents from the web which contain both words, while +distance learning will give a higher placing to documents containing both words.

Other operators

• - : used to exclude documents containing the search term

• Example, +distance -learning -open will retrieve documents which contain the word distance but which do not contain the words learning or open.

• " " : used to enclose a series of words which are to be treated as a phrase

• for example, “distance learning management " will find only documents containing this specific phrase.

Downloading and Storing web based Materials

• Web based materials are in different format.• Can be in .doc,.ppt, .xls, .pdf, .txt etc.• File extension in the document help the user

to identify program which will be used to open the document that has been downloaded.

Downloading materials

Activity I

• Information searching using Operators

Activity II

• Downloading and Saving downloaded materials