Tips on How to Use the Web

1. If you want to go to a website that sounds interesting, then you need to know its address (AKA: URL). A website's address/URL looks something like this: http://www.msn.com 

2. If you don't know the name of the site you want to visit or you just want to look up a certain subject, such as homeschooling, then you need to go to a search engine. Here are a couple of good ones:

* www.google.com
* www.dogpile.com
* www.mamma.com
* www.hotbot.com

3. To use these, you just type the address into your address bar at the top of your browser (i.e. Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator). 

4. Next you type in the word/subject/phrase you want to look up. For example, if you want to find "Focus on the Family" then you just type that into the blank that the search engine provides, not the address bar at the top of the screen! 

5. Bingo! A list of likely websites will appear and you just click on the one that sounds the most interesting.  Your mouse will usually change into a hand-shape when it goes over a link. 

6. Links are usually an underlined word or sentence that you click on to get into the website or to travel to other parts of the website. There might be pictures to click on instead of words. It could even be a combination of the two. Now you too have surfed the web!

7. Let's say you want to print an email, but you only want the message and not all that annoying text at the beginning and the end. To do this, you must select the text in the email by pointing your mouse at the beginning of the message (or whatever part of the message that you want to start at) and hold down the left mouse button. Then move the mouse in whatever direction it takes to select the text. Now, go to the "File" menu at the top of the screen and click on "Print." You will notice that it lists under "Page Range" the following selections: "All," "Current Page," "Selection," and "Pages." Click on "Selection" and then hit OK. It'll now print your selection!

If you need another copy or an updated version of this paper, go to the homeschool website and download it:  http://iowahomeschool.tripod.com