WebDoGS

Navigation Page

Here is a listing of the types of information on this Navigation Help Page:

Getting Around....  How to find your way around WebDoGS (info for new users).
For Students.... How to get the most GeoInformation from the Internet fast.
For Teachers....How to use the Internet for projects the smart way.
Class Projects.... How your class can join ours to develop new WebDogS projects.
Downloading WebDoGS.... How to maximize your access speed to WebDoGS graphics.

• Browser Choice.... Get Netscape Navigator 2.0 or higher (we use 3.0 Gold), or Microsoft Internet Explorer. The most current version will allow you to utilize the best of WebDoGS (like frames, client-side image maps, animated gifs without refresh flickering and JavaScript programs).
  
• A great place to start.... Try the WebDoGS Rocks in the News page. Rocks in the News is simply a highlighted list of recent news stories with links to other sites where you can find out what's good, bad and ugly in the world of Earth Science happenings. Quakes, eruptions, cool fossil finds or the latest hot research results, you'll find it here!
  
• Getting around WebDoGS.... Most of our pages use "frames" to make them easier to use. Try our Rocks on the Web page, for example. The different areas of the screen are separated by a thin bar (either vertical or horizontal). You can click on the bar and drag it one way or the other to move that frame boundary, to customize your screen.
  We use a little geologic map of Kentucky on most of our pages that will take you back to the WebDoGS home page. Notice how the cursor looks like a finger when you point to the map, and the sign at the bottom of your Java-enabled browser tells you that Clicking Here will take you back to the WebDoGS home page.
• Other cool stuff... WebDoGS is expanding, and we'd like your input. Check out our other skeletal pages, look for ways that you could help us.

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• How to find cool stuff on the 'net.... Don't go to Infoseek! and type in "earthquakes". That will give you about 50,000 websites to look through. Go to the WebDoGS Rocks on the Web page and find out what kind of information is available on line, then decide what it is you really want to know about quakes, then preview the sites through annotated website listing. When you click on a website in the BOTTOM part of the Rocks on the Web page, a separate browser window (Browser2) will appear for you to surf through that site. If it isn't what you wanted, click on another site in the Rocks on the Web page and the new site will appear in Browser2, instead of having to go BACK, BACK, BACK 'til you find us again. It's cool, it's fast, it's WebDoGS!
  
• How to reference things you find on the 'net.... Because the net is everchanging and storage of archival materials is nothing like that of a library, you must do several things. Minimally, your references must include:
• the exact URL of the webpage(s) where you got the information
• the author of the material
• the date that you retrieved the information.

     If you cannot recover this basic information, the material reference becomes relatively worthless, and the information you recovered is nice, but undocumented. If you can get more information about the source from the website (articles, books, etc.), look these up and reference them.  Additionally, learn to be a critical reader. Just because you read something, doesn't make it true. This appears to be especially true for the Web.

• Want to join the WebDoGS?.... Ask your teacher or professor about starting a class project with the WebDoGS. Or if you want to volunteer on your own, see our Credits page. Look around, and see what looks like fun. We Want You!
  

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• What makes a good assignment on the Net.... As of 1996, it was no longer adequate to simply assign students the task of looking for interesting information in a given field on the World Wide Web. That was acceptable last year, perhaps. There are now so many sites and it has become so easy to search for broad topics that the assignment has become trivial.
     Instead, get your students to Publish their assignments on the Web! It is getting easier, and already many of them have experience. With the simple templates now available in many places, you can easily get started yourself and provide simple instructions for them to construct their own web pages. The design elements are completely your own, to fit your coursework.
     
• Use WebDoGS for your publishing your better assignments.... We want you and your students to submit your geological web pages for inclusion with our. In fact, WebDoGS is designed for that purpose. Look around, and see where your class objectives overlap with our material and design a project that adds to the WebDoGS holdings. If you have a good idea that we currently don't have a category for, tell us about it! We want to have the coolest geology stuff on the planet, and if you've got it we want to showcase it here.
  
• How to reference things you find on the Net.... Demand proper referencing from your student projects. Be specific in how you ask them to reference their findings. See the section above in For Students on referencing the Web..
  

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• Enter the Time Machine!.... At the top of the Time Machine, there will soon be a button to push that will provide you with a template for making a new page for the Time Machine! After surfing the Time Machine to see what is there, your class can try to find some interesting aspect of earth history and add a page that tells all about it! What? We skipped Wooly Mammoths? Write us a page! What? No Albertasaurus? Give us the goods! Send your finest artwork! Get published now, on the Web!
  
• Join our search for great Earth Science Websites!.... Our Rocks on the Web page needs your contributions. Even though we do our best to keep these up to date, it is an impossible task WITHOUT YOUR HELP! Explore an interesting website and give us your review. Currently, most of our annotation is short and pithy. We could, in the near future, consider longer, more thoughtful reviews of these sites if that will help our users find the information they need.
  
• Special Topics.... Check out the Special Topics listing on the Rocks on the Web page. This is a place for web pages devoted to providing information on specific topical studies. One of our students made a study of websites with information about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. So if you want to know more, use this as your starter. We want a lot more pages like that, with annotated website information. A great way to get your entire class looking for information on the Web, and writing about it.
  
• Everywhere else on WebDoGS.... We want your ideas!
  
  

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• This is our plan.... As soon as we get a lot of cool graphics on this page for the Time Machine and Glossary and Hyperactive Mineral kit, it is going to be too slow for most of the K-12 classrooms of the world. Instead of going over the Web to access it, when the Time Machine looks stable, we will create a bundled version of the entire WebDoGS file system and let your System Administrator download and install the whole schebang on your own school's file server. Then it is local and can go as fast as your own server, instead of ours minus the network minus your modem, etc..
  
• Sound Good?.... It won't happen for a while yet, but when this looks good enough (probably late spring 1997), this is where you'll find out how to do it.
  
• Sounds Good Even Now?.... Actually, you can do it yourself right now, but I can't imagine that anybody likes it that much yet. Get WebWhacker software and whack our WebDoGS. And drop us email telling us why in the heck you did.
  
• But even then, don't forget.... to log in here for the Rocks in the News!
  

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