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The Student's Guide to RiverWeb INTRODUCTION Using computers can sometimes be very confusing, especially for those of you who are just learning how to use one for the first time. Teachers sometimes give out computer assignments and tasks with the belief that they need no further explanation, as if everyone operated at the same computer literacy level. This is simply not true. The more complex the task, the greater the chance that beginning students will get lost somewhere along the way, and this is nowhere more true than for multi-media assignments and applications. Multi-media includes both the CD-Rom you are now using and the World Wide Web, also known as the Internet, and in fact any computer program or network that uses images, sounds, video, etc. is considered a multi-media application. All of the programs and lessons on RiverWeb are multi-media in nature. To help minimize the frustration surrounding this program - and any multi-media application you later encounter - we have created The Student's Guide to RiverWeb. The goal of this guide is to help you better navigate, utilize, and understand the materials presented on the RiverWeb CD-Rom and World Wide Web sites. To aid you in this, we have divided the materials into individual sections designed as a supplement to a more general American history classroom lecture. The four major themes developed on this RiverWeb CD-Rom are: the Mississ ippi River and the Early Illinois Settlements; East St. Louis, Illinois - A Typical River Town?; Artery of a Nation: River Transportation, Railroads, and the Mississippi River; and A Music of the People: American Culture and the Blues on the Mississippi. Some of the sections contain so much material that division into a number of sub-sections became necessary, but each includes a full explanation. You will notice that the sections often overlap, and these connections are there to help you better understand the way in which one subject effects another, seemingly very different one. Because the aim of these supplements is to give you an introduction to the use of academic technologies and history, we created an additional section to give you an overview of how computers are used to study history. This is the first section of the study guide. The study guide for each part contains five sub-sections. The first is "Explanation of Content" and will help you place each of the RiverWeb units into its broader historical content. The second section, "Questions to Think About," gives you an idea of what to look for while reading the RiverWeb materials as well as any supplemental materials relating to the texts. They are also designed for use as classroom discussion questions. The third part, "Possible Assignments," gives you an idea of the kind of homework your instructor might ask you to complete using the RiverWeb and supplemental materials. While you do not have to actually do these assignments (although it would certainly benefit you if you did), thinking about how you would approach such a project can help prepare you to face similar tasks in the future. The fourth section, "Furt her Reading," gives you a place to go for additional information related to the RiverWeb materials. The final section, "Other Links of Interest," allows you to explore other multi-media sites on the World Wide Web, and can be used in conjunction with search engines such as Alta Vista (https://www.altavista.com) and Webcrawler (https://www.webcrawler.com) to help you answer the study questions and assignments.
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