Internet 101 Overview Part One

This week I’m going to tell you about the first half of our new Internet 101 beginner’s guide to the web.

As I told you last week, Internet 101 is split up into four sections, Internet Basics or “What is the Internet?”, Internet Navigation or “How do I navigate around the web?”, Social Media and eCommerce.

This week let’s look at the first two sections…

Many people don’t actually know some of the basic fundamentals of how the web actually works. Sure, they use it all the time, but when they send an email or browse a web page they don’t actually know what’s happening behind the scenes to allow them to do that.

Now you might be thinking ‘I don’t need to know how the web works, I just need to know how to use it’. And this may be true to an extent – the trouble with just learning how to use the web is you are typically just learning tasks – ‘this is how I send an email’, ‘this is how I find a webpage’, etc - you don’t actually get a depth of knowledge. And why is having a deep understanding important? Because when you understand how something works instead of just knowing how to use it, you can solve problems much quicker and learn new applications much faster.

I guarantee the first people to use Blogging, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were people who understood a bit about how the web works, not just how to use it – that meant they were far better prepared to understand these new developments – because they understood a bit about what is happening behind the scenes, their learning curve was shorter and they ‘got it’ quicker.

That’s why in the first section of internet 101, we cover the history of how the web was developed. We also cover how searching for content works, what you need to use the web (as well as the different options you have – something most people don’t know about). We also cover the dangers of using the web and how to protect your security online. Finally, we look into some basics of email – the communication backbone of the internet.

Next, we go into detail about how to find things on the web. There are many different ways of finding stuff online – not just search engines. We also cover how search engines work – including an Affilorama lesson on how to use Google.

Well that should get you started. Next week I’ll finish of on the second half of Internet 101.