Curriculum for WebTV
Curriculum for WebTV
Benefits of WebTV over computers
1) Affordable
2) Easier to operate - User friendly
3) No software to purchase
4)One of the great things about WebTV is the giving of access to billions of words and millions of pictures and sounds from all over the world to millions of people who've never used a computer.
5) No viruses
6) No extra furniture to purchase
7) Extra room not required
8) Keep in touch with friends or relatives WITHOUT the cost of a long distance telephone call. (Either by means of e-mail or in a chat room)
Equipment
WebTV Terminal and Keyboard
Television set
Phone line
The Basics
After purchasing your WebTV...where to start? The WebTV Home page. On the sidebar of the Home page, you'll find links called Setup and Using WebTV. Read every page you can find there. You'll need all that information in the first few months you have your terminal.
While we're talking about learning things, the reference resources on the Web are virtually endless; although they're finite, there's not only more out there than anyone could learn in a lifetime, there's more new information added in a day than you could read in a year. And yet, you have access to all of it from your own home, right through your television.
Questions and answers
Beyond what information you find in the basic pages just off the Home page, you'll find yourself frequently needing more detailed answers, or answers to new problems. One of the links you should have seen was to the Help Center, your first source of information and answers to common questions about your terminal, your subscription, the WebTV service, accessories, billing, and many other things. At the bottom of most pages at the Help Center, you'll find a search box to help you find what you're looking for.
If your question still isn't answered there, you'll find a query form linked from most of the pages at the Help Center allowing you to submit an e-mail to WebTV's customer service representatives for a personal answer (look for the white-on-green question-mark icon). But look for the answer at the site first, answers from customer service can take days to receive.
If you need more help than you find even there, visit the webtv.users newsgroup, a moderated forum allowing you to read 1,000 questions and answers people have put up there, and submit your own question for the moderators and other users to reply to.
The Web
The internet is huge. The most generally known part of the Internet is the World Wide Web. There are tens of millions of webpages available to you on the WWW, at the click of a link. To use all that's out there, you'll have to learn how to find things, and what common Internet terms mean. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to learn how to find what you're looking for, and what the lingo means, as soon as possible after getting online; it will determine to a great degree how much enjoyment and learning you derive from your time spent, and eliminate a major source of frustration.
While most of the content of the webpages out there is in relatively plain English, talking about the Internet and computers can get very confusing if you don't have any background in these areas.
One of the great things about WebTV is the giving of access to billions of words and millions of pictures and sounds from all over the world to millions of people who've never used a computer.
But the Internet was built, is being expanded by, and is maintained by people steeped in the jargon that's been a "secret tongue" for several decades, and it's not going to change; you'll need to learn quite a few of the terms to really understand what's going on out there on the Web (and it helps to know some of this stuff if you ever have a problem with your access or service, too).
You don't need to know a term until you need to know it, here's the most useful tool you can keep in your Favorites, a multidictionary search website called OneLook Dictionaries. Any time you come across a word or term like, for instance hyperlink, JPG, GIF, Usenet, ISDN, modem, HTML, RAM, encryption, PPP, CHAP, SSL, etc., you can pop over to OneLook and get several definitions in a few seconds. Don't figure it doesn't matter, it won't take long to look up a word, and knowledge in this case is definitely power.
The Web is a great way to instantly get news, weather, sports, stocks, entertainment/celebrity news. With businesses and corporations realzing the importance of their presence on the Internet, the list of research abilities is enormous from purchasing parts for your refrigerator to antiques; search for employment, finding lost friends and family members, information on medications, Social Security and other governmental agencies, Genealogy, etc.
E-Mail
Another common and important feature of the Internet is electronic mail. WebTV's e-mail is usually extremely fast, and you'll find yourself using it almost every day. We will take the time to learn how it works.
Online communications are a great avenue for those who may be homebound or recovering. Also see CHAT.
Technical information
Html, music, Copy,Cut, and Paste, images on pages and e-mail.
Favorites
After you begin surfing the Web on a regular basis, you'll want to save sites you find of interest in Favorites; think of them as bookmarks in a book with 50,000,000 pages. Again, take the time to learn about all the features and limitations of Favorites, they're a tool you'll need and understanding it is very important. And along with favorites, we'll learn other ways to compactly store all the items.
Additional Users
Add 5 additional users
Storage and extra e-mail
You can add up to 5 additional user accounts to your terminal subscription at NO additional charge. Each user you add will have their own e-mail address and storage, their own Favorites, and the primary user (the subscriber account) can place restrictions on the other users' access to mail, chat, and websites, through Setup (or Using WebTV) on the primary's Home page.
Chat
Live conversations with others. People like to talk, and newsgroups aren't "live" enough to carry on a real conversation. For this, you have access to a couple of kinds of chat. AND you can actually "converse" with your friends or relatives without a long distance phone call. This is another big topic, get ready to study about it.
Newsgroups
Another aspect of the Internet are the newsgroups, which can be thought of as dynamic bulletin boards with access from computers and set-top devices all over the world. This is a big topic, worth spending time learning about in detail.
Homepages
Pages are free
Display hobbies, personal interests, etc
With your WebTV, you can build a personal homepage for free, displaying whatever personal interests you have to anyone in the world with Internet access.
