INTRODUCTION
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INTRODUCTION [p002] |
Congratulations
In reaching this page you have taken your first successful step in obtaining materials relevant to your studies through the internet. Admittedly, you have, in fact, gained access to a page of text which is stored on a computer situated in Bristol (in r eality, a few doors down the road), but in doing so you have acquired the basics of navigation using an internet browser and can apply your knowledge to reach materials anywhere in the world, be it Bristol, Bogota or Brisbane. Thus, when reading the previ ous page, you will have noticed that some text was in a different colour (blue) and that as you moved the mouse pointer (a black outlined white arrow) around the screen and over the blue text it changed from an arrow to a hand, with some new text appearin g at the very bottom of the screen. This was the address of the page you were pointing at, in this case p002.htm. What this address means will be explained in your first week's assignment. You will also notice, if you return to the previous page, that the element you clicked on with your mouse has now changed colour to a lighter blue. This is to aid users by indicating which pages they have already visited in any one web browsing session.
For further information on using the Mouse with Windows programs, see Student's Guide to Word for Windows, p. 3.
Are you properly equipped?
Before embarking upon this course unit please ensure that you have, and have paid for, the following:
Hereafter, these three guides will be referenced as Student's followed by the appropriate software application and page number (e.g. Student's Word, p.3).
You will need the floppy disks for storing your own work (one master disk and one backup disk, this to be kept as an exact copy of the master) and will, therefore, need to have them with you whenever you are working through these course materials or in dependently on your essays. You will also need the three Student guides with you, and they must be brought to the workshops.
What and where next?
Before embarking upon the weekly assignments please take the time to read the other pages accessible from the course unit homepage. Once you are acquainted with what is expected of you, how the unit is organised and how you can obtain help, you will be in a much better position to begin to use the course materials contained in the Weekly assignments section.
The materials in these pages, together with the three Student's guides, constitute a self-contained unit. However, you will acquire context to what you are doing, and be in a better position to embark on your project (the means of assessment for this u nit; see Unit structure and timetable), if you have done some reading about the use of information technology (IT) by historians and thought about the sorts of questions which the advent of IT has allowed historians to investigate. You will find details of introductory and more advanced works available at Recommended reading.
To IT-MA home page
To Department of Historical Studies home page.
(c)R. Middleton 1997. Last Modified 4 September 2000.