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TUNE IN THE NET WORKSHOP: GLOBAL REACH FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
"Tune In the Net Workshop: Global Reach for the 21st Century" is an
eight week distance learning workshop focusing on tools for Internet
interactivity and conducted via e-mail and the World Wide Web (WWW).
The workshop will introduce the beginner to the basic concepts of
interactivity, and assist the more experienced user in making his or
her Web pages into a stand-out interactive site.
BACKGROUND
Interactivity is the ability of the Internet user to alter certain
aspects of his or her environment, resulting in useful functionality.
It is the method of control and contingent response between user and
medium. Some popular terms to describe interactive systems include
multimedia, hypermedia, infotainment and edutainment. Interactivity
can be as simple as an animation or as complex as a multi-user game
played over the Internet. However, most users will find practical
interactive applications more useful--applications such as hooking up
HTML forms to virtual shopping cart or on-line sales catalog scripts in
order to enhance a commercial site. Interactivity provides many ways
to obtain input from users, including the ability to make regions of an
image active so that a click on a "hot spot" will activate a link to
another Web page or initiate some other action. Users may also
interact with the Web page itself. Some examples of this include a
self-assessment quiz for a Web course, a price comparison calculator
for a commercial site, or a decision assistant, such as a color picker.
Internet site builders and Web page generators have become increasingly
sophisticated, incorporating "wizards" in order to simplify the work of
authors. These wizards provide templates and other useful functions
that enable authors to produce Web pages with little or no HTML coding
by hand.
JavaScript and VBScript have been introduced to provide scripting
capability for the two most widely used Web browsers, Netscape
Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, respectively. These
simple-to-use scripting languages allow a content author to write short
programs that can be activated by various Web page elements including
buttons, forms, backgrounds, and frames.
Scripts can also be used to program Web servers, as well as browsers,
in order to make content interactive. Server scripts are short
programs that provide additional Web server capabilities, such as
processing information from Web page forms. The most common way to
provide interactivity to Web pages is through Common Gateway Interface
(CGI) Web server scripts. Despite their popularity, CGI scripts can be
awkward in some cases and may place unnecessary demands on the Web
server. When they can be used, browser scripts are usually preferable
to server scripts as they cut down on unnecessary requests to the often
heavily taxed Web server.
With the introduction of the Java language by Sun Microsystems in 1995,
the Internet has become a rapidly evolving means for delivering
interactive content using text, graphics, audio, and video. Java is
quite different from the above mentioned Web server or browser
scripting. It is a platform-independent programming language with
built-in security and network communications capabilities. Java
programs, or applets, can be launched from a Web browser, or may
operate independently from the Web, with direct access to the Internet.
Several Java builder programs, such as JFactory and Marimba's Bongo,
permit experts in a given domain of knowledge, but who have limited
programming experience, to produce interactive content using
easy-to-use graphical tools. Java is also increasingly being used for
application programs, such as word processors, spreadsheets, and
database front-ends. Java's built-in networking and security make it
ideal for so-called "push" media, wherein applications and content are
updated often over a network when new information and new versions of
the software become available. For example, a Java-based on-line
newspaper can be updated with breaking news on the user's desktop
frequently, and automatically, during the day.
WORKSHOP CONTENT
The Tune In the Net Workshop will focus on how to efficiently and
effectively design and use interactive Internet content. During the
workshop you will learn how to:
* quickly prototype Web pages and complete sites using page generators
and site builders such as Netscape Navigator Gold, Microsoft
FrontPage, NetObjects Fusion, and Adobe PageMill and SiteMill.
* make Web page forms and link them to useful applications such as
databases, key word searches, guest books, and user surveys.
* give Web pages an interactive graphical look with client-side image
maps. This capability of both Navigator and Internet Explorer
permits clicking on different regions of an image in order to link to
another Web page or function.
* use frames and HTML 3.2 to customize Web pages.
* make graphics, fonts, and page content react to user input with
layers, Dynamic HTML, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
* use JavaScript and VBScript to give Web pages interactive
capabilities, such as personalizing pages with names and e-mail
addresses, displaying current date and time, image-flipping to
produce buttons that highlight, providing colored backgrounds that
appear to fade in from one color to another, and other special
effects.
* utilize "push" media. For example, to explore new frontiers, such
as Netscape Netcaster, Marimba Castanet, and Microsoft Active
channels.
HOW TO SIGN UP
Three Tune In The Net Workshops are scheduled for this fall:
Session III .............. September 2 - October 25
Session IV ............... September 22 - November 15
Session V ................ October 13 - December 6
The cost of the workshop is $40 US.*
To sign up for the workshop, please send an e-mail message to:
[log in to unmask]
and in the body of the message, place
subscribe tune3
to sign up for Session III, or
subscribe tune4
to sign up for Session IV, or
subscribe tune5
to sign up for Session V.
Or, sign up online by pointing to the URL
http://www.bearfountain.com/arlington/tune.html
In order to gain maximum advantage from the Tune In the Net Workshop,
it will be necessary to have a Web browser, preferably either a recent
version of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The workshop leader, Thomas P. Copley,Ph.D. has successfully taught
several on-line courses in the past, including, most recently, "Make
the Link Workshop" during 1995 and 1996, and the "Go-pher-it Workshop"
in 1994. He has been actively involved in on-line teaching for more
than a decade, and has been a consultant to Apple Computer, Inc. He is
also one of the founders of the Electronic University, and has been on
the faculty of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and Washington
State University. He is the editor of an electronic newsletter, the
Telelearning Network Synthesizer.
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* A 12.5% discount is available to anyone who has already participated
in "Make the Link Workshop"(MLW), or intends to do so now. While not
a prerequisite for the "Tune In the Net Workshop"(TINW), MLW provides
complimentary information that may also be of interest to many
participants in TINW. With the discount the cost of TINW is $35US, and
for MLW the cost is $20. For both workshops the cost is $55. For more
information about MLW, send email to [log in to unmask] or access
the URL <http://www.bearfountain.com/arlington/links.html>.
________________________________________________________________
THOMAS P. COPLEY [log in to unmask]
Make the Link Workshop www.bearfountain.com/arlington/
