Time's Harvest, Fall 1997

Agenda for Class on Wednesday, September 3

Link back to "Welcome..."

Last updated: 9/3/97

NOTE: The classroom for this meeting is 113 Rackham.

  1. Confirm everyone's Internet access
    1. Status of WSU e-mail
      1. Scheduled to go up September 10.
      2. All current students will automatically be notified of their mail ID and password via U.S. Mail. Mail accounts will be purged at the start of the fourth semester after your last registration (one year).
      3. No charges. Software available in basement of Science Library (313-577-5805). Bring your own floppy diskette.
      4. Any Internet mail service will do for this course (userid@xxx.yyy.zzz)
  2. Course Web Site
    1. Course Web site is at http://www.cll.wayne.edu/isp/drbowen/thf97
    2. Logging in to conference and chat room from the course Web site
      1. You self-assign a UserID and password the first time you log in
      2. After this first login, the system administrator (that's me!) assigns you to the course conference and chat room
      3. After that, when you log in to the conference and chat room using that same UserID and password, you will have access to the conference and the chat room
      4. Conference: Topics and Follow-ups
      5. Chat room: good for office hours (but telephone and in-person will still work) and working on Team Reports.
        NOTE: Chat is optional for this course, but requires Java-enabled Browser (Java is a computer language), e.g. Netscape Navigator 3 (free download for educational use at http://www.netscape.com) or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 (free download at http://www.microsoft.com)
  3. Reaching the Instructor
    1. Telephone:
      * WSU: 313-577-1498
      * Ford: 313-390-2155 (short items only, please)
      * Home: 248-549-8518
      Calendar is on the course Web site
    2. E-mail: drbowen@cll.wayne.edu
  4. Overview of the courses
    1. Futurists - people who think about the future(s). Futures Studies. Why do we want to know about the future?
    2. Three prior stages of human society, two prior transitions
    3. Society seems to be heading for a third wave of change
  5. Course schedule
  6. Teams and Team Reports
    1. Make sure that Bowen gets a copy of the Team Report
    2. Future Team Reports via Team Conferences and chat rooms
  7. Pictures
  8. Client-server; Servers used for this course
    1. E-mail, World Wide Web and many other computer functions operate on a client-server model
    2. The central computer that stores the information is the server. A server is a computer running server software.
    3. The user works with the information using a computer client. A client is a computer running client software.
    4. Examples of Servers used in this course
      1. Domain Name Server translates letters in computer address to numbers. For example, www.cll.wayne.edu is 141.217.142.149
      2. E-mail server receives, stores and sends your e-mail messages. (Free commercial e-mail available via World Wide Web at http://www.juno.com)
      3. World Wide Web server receives requests for files and sends them. The client is also called a Web Browser. Examples of client software are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer
      4. Conference server receives requests for conference items and sends them, receives postings and stores them. In this case, uses the Web server for communications.
      5. Chat server keeps track of who "is in the room", receives input from anyone in the room and distributes it to everybody in the room. In this case, uses the Web server for communications.
      6. Any one of these Servers can go down without affecting the others, except that if the Web server goes down, it takes the conference and chat servers with it.
  9. HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
    1. You can always see examples by choosing View / Source in your Web browser. By matching the source text with the text in the Web view, you can find the tags in the source view that produce that special effect that you want. Also, if you are working on an HTML file, preview it regularly in your Browser by choosing File / Open File.
    2. Create and edit HTML files using the following programs:
      1. In Windows, Notepad
      2. On Mac, SimpleText
      3. In a Word processor, use Save As / Text or ASCII
      4. WYSIWYG HTML editing using Microsoft Word with Internet Assistant, available in ISP computer lab in 113 Rackham
    3. Uses "tags" to mark up an ordinary text file - tags are enclosed in angle brackets <>
    4. Many HTML tags come in pairs called "containers" that have the first to start section and the second to end it <xxx>......</xxx>
    5. Container for whole document <HTML> as the first thing in the file, </HTML> as the last
    6. An HTML document has two parts
      1. Head - information about the document, ordinarily not seen by user <HEAD> </HEAD>
      2. Body - what is displayed by the Browser <BODY> </BODY>

        <HTML>
        <HEAD>
        stuff in the HEAD
        </HEAD>
        <BODY>
        stuff in the BODY
        </BODY>
        </HTML>
    7. HEAD - most important is TITLE - this is what the Browser puts at the top of the content window. This also is used by the search engines for cataloging the document.
      1. <TITLE>Example of a title</TITLE>
    8. BODY
      1. Headings <H1>Heading Text</H1> through <H6>xxx</H6>
      2. Italics is <EM>text to be in italics</EM> (for emphasis)
      3. Bold is <STRONG>text to be boldfaced</STRONG>
      4. Centering is <CENTER>Text to be centered</CENTER>
      5. A hyperlink back to the course welcome sheet, which is welcome.htm:
        Link back to "<A HREF="welcome.htm">Welcome...</A>"
        (The Welcome... will be underlined, in blue, and will be the link -- click on it to go back to the welcome page)
      6. Start new paragraph is <P> (</P> ordinarily not used)
      7. Start new line without a paragraph break is <BR> (no </BR>)
      8. Inserting a picture in a file myface.gif:
        <IMG SRC="myface.gif">