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Due: |
Monday June 11 |
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Evaluation: |
15 points |
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Printout: |
1) Printout(s) of history showing you have been to 15-20 sites 2) Printout showing a review of your product 3) Printout showing you found your product available on an auction site 4) Printout showing a comparison list of pricing for your product |
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Related Materials: |
Preparation: Make sure you read and understand the HW Theme document. Before starting this assignment make sure you have an idea what product you may be interested in purchasing. Read through this whole assignment first before doing it.
Purpose: Get comfortable navigating the web with a browser - Safari, Mozilla or Internet Explorer. Visit interesting sites which are useful for product shopping. Find information on a number of products - including how much they cost. Decide which product you would like to use for your "theme" this summer.
Directions:
You can do this assignment using a web-browser on any computer. The directions below talk about using a Macintosh computer in the labs and using the browser Safari. If you chose to do your work elsewhere, you may need to figure out how to do some things on your own, including how to print the History of the sites you have visited. Safari will be demonstrated in recitation.
Open up the browser. On the Macs, Safari is available on the dock. Double-click it to start it. Browse ("surf") the Web. The point of this step is to get comfortable looking around the web. A few possible starting points to explore might be:
- The myriad of web sites available through Rutgers. Just click on
links off the first page that comes up.
- Use the search option to see how it works. Near the magnifying glass icon on the upper right of the window you can type in a phrase. This will use a search engine (google?) to find webpages matching your query.
- Enter addresses (URLs) of a web site you have heard about or seen advertised. Remember to give the full address of the site, including special symbols http://www....../
- Try different Search Engines and Web Indexes such as www.google.com, hotbot.com, altavista.com, msn.com and yahoo.com. Experiment with them, read the help files to understand how to do more advanced searches.
- Learn how to bookmark a page (or "save a favorite") so you can
easily get back to that page later. In Safari you can use the Add
Bookmark command off the Bookmarks menu. When using this you can
supply a name for the bookmark (if you don't want to use the
webpage's default) and then specify where you want to place it -
either on the Menu or the Bar. Those placed on the Bookmarks Bar will
show up on the Tab Bar right above the main Safari window. If you are
using your own computer, you can easily get back to any of those
pages during this and future sessions on that computer by just
selecting them off the menu. However, due to the fact that the setup
on Rutgers computers is rebuilt after each use, your bookmarks can
not be saved between sessions of using the computer in our labs.
Thus, it might be very wise to email useful URLs (addresses) to
yourself or jot them down (by hand, on paper). In future assignments,
you will want to get back
to some of these sites to get to the good info you have found. (Another
place you may want to save bookmarks, so you don't have to write them
down, is on your personal my.rutgers portal page. It is very easy to
add bookmarks here. And since you can get to your my.rutgers.edu page
from anywhere, this is a great place to put bookmarks. See HW2 for more
about my.rutgers.)
Now that you are familiar with using the web, use this opportunity to search for information on your product. The appendix to this assignment lists many sites you can try. You should start by getting some advice on doing online shopping by reading an online shopping guide (a decent guide is listed in the appendix.) Guides will give details about the different type of websites you can use to help you with your online purchasing. After you have a better understanding of the various types of sites, you will want to try at least one site in each of first six categories listed in the appendix - search engine shopping services, online malls, corporate sites, shopping bots, product review sites and online auctions. Try to choose an exact product (not just "camera" but an exact model of camera) such that you can find info on it in all or at least most of the six categories of sites. The opinions in the product review sites may be very helpful to help you narrow down your selection to an actual item you may really want to purchase some day. Use the corporate sites to get further details on the item. Look around and see what is the best price you can find. The shopping services, malls, and corporate sites may have pricing info, and the shopping bots may be useful to find the best deal. Also, see if you can find the same model, or something very similar at an auction site - where it might be possible to find an individual who is willing to sell you the same item for a very cheap price. To get credit for this assignment, you must visit 15 to 20 websites - which will show up in your "history" and later you will print and turn in. But to do the assignment well, the chances are very strong you will visit many more sites than this.
We expect you to spent a decent amount of time doing this browsing and research. As proof that you have done the work, we expect you to submit a few printouts as explained here. The fact is, you can get these printouts very quickly without spending much time on the computer. However you may want to note that if you do not spend an adequate amount of time on the web now looking around, future assignments will be significantly harder for you. So, spent the proper amount of time now.
The printouts you need are as follows:
- Printout 1: Get a printout showing your "history" to demonstrate you have visited 15 to 20 websites. Below, in the hints section, are some details on how you can get this printout using Safari in the computer labs. Note, depending on what computer system and browser you are using, sometimes items are removed from the history list as you are surfing the web. If necessary, when ready to print, just visit a lot of sites by just going from one to the next - without using the Back button and other similar features. This usually makes the history grow quickly.
- Printout 2:. Print out a webpage showing a review on the product you plan to use for your HW theme. If you can not find a review on the exact product, use a product that is close.
- Printout 3: Print out a webpage showing you have found your product, or something close, on an auction site.
- Printout 4: Using a shopping bot or similar shopping tool - like www.google.com/products - get a list comparing places you can buy your precise product (or something similar) for various prices. Print out this list.
Make sure you write your name and section number on all printouts you plan to turn in. You can staple them all together,
Don't forget to log out from the computers in the labs when you are done using them.
Good luck and enjoy yourself.
Printing Your History in Safari on a Macintosh in the Labs:
Safari has a History menu. This will show a list of places you have recently been to. It also has a submenu called "Earlier Today" that shows places you were at today, but longer ago. So you can easily see where you have been and go back to old places. But how do you print this?
On the Mac, there is a way to save an image of the screen into a file. We are going to use this trick to allow us to get a printout of the History menu. When you are ready, hold open the history menu (and if you want, the Earlier Today submenu). While you are holding it open with the mouse, use your other hand to hit three keys on the keyboard. Apple-Shift 3. (The Apple key, or "command" key, is the one with an apple or cloverleaf character on it, right next to the space bar. This key, used in conjunction with other keys triggers commands. This is like using a Function key on a PC.)
Hitting Apple-Shift-3 "snaps" a picture of exactly what is on the screen and places a picture into a file on the harddrive of the Mac. You will see an icon representing this picture show up on the "desktop" (screen). It should be over on the righthand side and say Picture under it. This file is a PNG - or "portable network graphic" - which means many web browsers and graphics preview applications can display it. Each time you snap a picture a new number is used - so you can end up with a Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3 and so on.
To print a picture, doubleclick the picture. This will open up the file using the Macintosh Preview application. Once the picture opens (don't get confused, it will look just like the screen - right!), you can use the PRINT command on the File menu to print it to the printer. Retrieve your printout and write your name and section on it and you are ready to turn it in. It may be necessary to print several histories - one showing the most recent visits and another showing the submenu "Earlier Today" - if you want to show you have been to 15 to 20 sites. Once you are done printing the picture file, remember to leave the software by using Quit from the second menu.
The Macintoshes are supposed to clean up all files you leave on them when you log off. But just to be safe, you should throw out these pictures yourself before you logoff. Before doing this you might want to drag-copy these to your flash drive. This will give you practice saving your own work. So see if you can connect your flash drive and save your work to it. The USB ports on many of the Macintoshes in the labs are on the back of the keyboard. ("Drag-copy" means use the mouse to pull the icon from where it is over to the icon of your own drive.) When you are ready to get rid of your pictures off the computer, just use the mouse to "drag" the picture over to the TrashCan on the dock and let go.
APPENDIX - Sites to help you find info, reviews and pricing on your product
Here are some good places to start looking for info on products. You can of course use a search engine to find further possibilities in any one of the categories below. It may even be wise to narrow it down further by listing your product in the search. So in google you might enter "online auction bicycle" to find auction sites that are offering bicycles. This may not always work and yet on the other hand, sometimes it works great. One of the points of this assignment is to get very comfortable searching for things, so try many possibilities and different search engines.
Online Shopping Guides & Advice
Search Engines and Web Guides Shopping Services
Online Malls
Corporate Sites
Shopping Bots
Product Review Sites
Auction Sites