I am teaching a course about College Success…and the textbook is truly horrible. So I have decided to just start adding some things that my students really should know, especially in terms of using the Internet.
I am introducing them to snopes dot com and a few rules about email etiquette and have had them create resumes and open a monster dot com account.
Any other suggestions for real-life use of the Internet that might not be common knowledge?
Also, any other suggestions from current or previous college students would be helpful - what do you wish your instructor would have told you/warned you about, as a new student in college?
ALWAYS examine each popup message, and when in doubt click ‘cancel’ to whatever it says.
(I know several people who just click OK to anything and get shitloads of malware installed. Why this is a bad thing is totally beyond them, until their computer starts acting up and I’m summoned to fix the “funky stuff” that is happening.)
Better yet, don’t click on any “buttons”. Hit the X to close the window. A lot of times, popups have fake buttons that look like real ones that when clicked, take you where they want to take you.
Teach them how to search with quotes and boolean stuff. It might minimize the amount of “Just google it” responses on discussion forums.
Email was not originally designed to send large files, such as pictures. These days you can generally send maybe a few MB via email, but it’s better to post large files on an FTP server if you can. For pictures, there are plenty of free services that deal with that.
Phishing emails are ones that pretend to be from, say, your bank, but when you click on the link it goes to a scam website that attempts to collect your personal information so they can steal your money. You should never respond to an email that asks you for such things. Also, you can sometimes spot scam websites by looking at the URL. For example, the actual Bank of America website has this URL:
Note that the first thing after the // at the beginning is www.bankofamerica.com. That first part is the domain name. Anything after that is other stuff hosted on that domain - subpages, Flash animations, message board software, whatever. Now, a scam website will have the same graphical appearance as the real one, but the domain name will be different out of necessity. It might look something like this:
Here, the domain is an IP address.* When dealing with a legitimate website, that number will nearly always be translated into words, for the benefit of humans. In other words, the IP address stays behind the scenes. In this case the scammer wants you to see the www.bankofamerica.com, hoping that you won’t know you’re actually on some other domain and will enter your personal info.
[sub]* I deliberately chose an IP address that is reserved for local networks - it points back at you, as it were, instead of out on the Internet.[/sub]
I think you should spend a few class periods on research and evaluating sources – why it is a bad idea to cite Wikipedia in a college-level paper, how to use databases like JSTOR (assuming your school library subscribes to them), how to document online sources (many students seem to think the URL alone constitutes a valid bibliography entry).
This isn’t strictly Internet-related, but showing them how to back up data and explaining why it’s important to keep their virus protection updated is always an excellent idea.
I definitely agree - see some sites like these to help them learn how to evaluate web resources. Also the citing resources section of this page has links to various citation styles.
Teach them about reputable web sites, i.e. just because you find something on some arbitrary web site on the Internet doesn’t mean it is true. That applies particularly to medical information, but also applies to other subjects.
I second the comments about phishing and related scams. Generally speaking, train them to have a healthy level of scepticism about anything they see on the Internet (e.g. Does it REALLY make sense for somebody I’ve never heard of to want me to help him get 50 million dollars out of his country?!).
It might make sense to tell your students how to avoid identity theft. After all, they’ll be getting their first credit cards in college. Also, maybe you could cover what sorts of info they should post about themselves on-line, and remind them to check that there isn’t info or pictures or what-have-you out there that could damage their job prospects.
If your school is not using Turnitin, make them. A huge number of colleges use it to check for proper use of borrowed text and ideas, and they need to get their little plagiaristic nards kicked by Turnitin, before they enter that arena. They and you will be shocked.
Make them aware of the various citation engines available online. They generate proper, cut-and-paste-ready APA, MLA and other-style citations for the information about a source that they enter. Saves a lot of time.
I will third the unit on evaluation of sources.
Make them aware of how a search engine really works. It’s not there to answer questions, it’s there to search for matching text, and that should inform how they formulate their search strings.
Teach them logic, formal and informal. Nothing’s better for the brain.
They need to know Word for their papers, Excel for their labs, and Power Point for just about any class. A professor might demand a presentation any time. They should know how to create a presentation that doesn’t annoy their audiences.
I teach all this in the context of a computer class. Every week, I blog a set of questions realted to digital technology that the students must try to find answers for. The students must create a Word Document with the answers, which they submit to Turnitin. We then have a class discussion where the students defend their answers with the credibility of their sources and the logic of their choices. The answers that emerge from that discussion are deemed to be the correct ones.
Put assignments and course information on a blog or a website, so they can get used to working with those tools as a student.
[hijack]scotandrsn–Citation engines? Things that save time on making up bibliographies? I could really use a good citation engine. I’m writing my master’s thesis, and I’m using a spreadsheet to keep track of my sources, which I input one by one, by hand. Could you clue me in on which citation engines you like best?[/hijack]
Also your school may have a (subscription?) to RefWorks-- check the library website.
Scribble, you’re in grad school? Purchase a copy of EndNote. It talks to Word and does searches. There’s a cheaper thing called um. . . BookEnds out there, too, for Mac.
Make sure you teach your students how use their college’s resources online and off line.
What most students don’t know (myself included) is about all the resources available to them from the college and how to use them. Especially any place that will help them with their writing. Tutoring is embarrassing in high school, but a lot more acceptable in college. Make sure they know that.
As for the Internet, teach them how to judge a website creditability. Most people judge by the layout and would never find someone like Cecil Adams credible by looking at our front page. Or even worst, they might actually find Cecil Adams credible by our front page and not by what he writes.
Knowing how to use Google is very important, but more important is knowing how to access the various credible reference sites that are probably available through the college website.
Thank you all for your comments! I fully intend to incorporate a lot of what has been posted here.
The textbook is truly horrible…they spend chapter after chapter going over things that are simply too stupid to mention in public, or so basic that only someone who has lived in a cave for the past 20 years would find even slightly relevant. That is why I want to start doing some things in class that might actually help these students in the next few years, and considering this is a computer lab course, I want to use the Internet and let them see it is more than just a way to check their email.
And scotandrsn, your course sounds exactly like the one I am teaching - and yes, we are going over Word, Excel, PowerPoint and a little of MS Access. I have created a website for this course and intend to do an update this weekend. I will link some of the sites that have been mentioned so far - so if anyone has any additional sites, or ideas for class projects/exercises, let me know!
I don’t know if you’ve already thought of it, but you could cull a really cool and useful list of reference sites that could help kids in college from the thread containing the General Questions list of reference sites.
I mean I would have loved a list of quality sites when I started college - places like imdb, WebMD, and Google Scholar.
(Note, also that a secure site will begin https:// rarther than http://, although I expect to begin seeing https:// sites being established by scammers pretty soon, if they have not already begun).
Next point: plagiarizing is BAD. Always BAD. Flunk the course and perhaps get expelled from school bad. In addition, the overwhelming number of plagiarized efforts can be spotted by a quick Google™ search and the few that might be missed can be discovered by professional software that more and more instructors are beginning to use.
About those popups: Any popup advertising security or performance-enhancing software is suspect, especially if the ad just says, “Would you like to do X” without even mentioning the name of the product that does X. A lot of these aren’t very good quality, and some are even spyware, trojans, or worse. Legitimate software for those things isn’t likely to use popups.
Have your students go to the public library and talk to the reference librarians. My county has library subscriptions to a wide variety of research databases. Library card holders can obtain the login and password to do their own searches.
My county public school system has the same resources for students. I am amazed at the high quality subscription services designed for elementary students. I haven’t tried out the Junior and Senior High resources yet.
Second, third or fourth the message on backing up work in progress.