You can think of the term ‘Internet’ as International + Network. Hence an internet is a network that lets computers all over the world communicate with each other.
Internet vs WWW
Most likely you have heard of both these terms: Internet and World Wide Web. Although related to each other these are not synonymous. The internet is a network of networks that connects computers all over the world and lets them communicate. In-depth study of the technology involved in this communication is beyond the scope of this course. But we do need to understand the world wide web or just ‘web’ and its application in our daily use of internet. “The Web is the worldwide collection of text pages, digital photographs, music files, videos, and animations you can access over the Internet.”Woodford, Chris. (2006) How the Web works. Retrieved from http://www.explainthatstuff.com/howthewebworks.html. [Accessed (July 27th, 2016)] For a quick overview of the World Wide Web watch the following video by Common Craft:
Manuel Tezozomoc Lopez Fosado. “World Wide Web explicado por commoncraft – AprenderConTecnologia.com.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 12 July 2016
To sum up, the internet is a world-wide network of computers where as the web is a piece of software(or an application) that allows these computers to share data.
If you are brand new, have limited experience with the internet, or wish to know more about certain functions of the internet then click on the following links which will take you to relative sections of the GCFLearnFree.org courses (be prepared to wait for a few moments for the lessons to download). For the first three links, do not click on any tutorials embedded in these chapters, just read through all the material, watch any videos and complete any interactive exercises and then come back to this page for further instructions.:
- What is the Internet?
- What Can You do Online?
- Connecting to the Internet
- Internet Safety – These eight lessons are excellent for the beginner as well as the experienced user and try the quiz at the end of the lessons.
Feel free to also check out the Internet Safety for Kids section which is also an excellent resource and can be found at the GCFLearnFree.org site.