Okay. We're back. That is, SCREENsite has recovered from its crash. If
you tried to get through and weren't able to, give 'er another shot.
Here's the info on it all over again (including a correction on e-mail
access to the World Wide Web)...
The Internet has provided a new way for film/TV educators and
students to share resources and distribute materials for teaching and
research.
SCREENsite is a free service on the Internet's World Wide Web
(WWW) that stores a variety of teaching/research materials devoted to
the study of film and television.
WHAT IS SCREENSITE?
On SCREENsite you'll find, among other things:
Indexes and abstracts of film/TV journals
A listing of jobs in film/TV education and resumes of persons
seeking employment
A directory of educators' e-mail addresses
Course syllabi
Information on film/TV colleges
Textbook sample chapters
Miscellaneous pedagogical materials--such as handouts on how
to analyze films
SCREENsite also directs the user to other film/TV resources on the
Web through a selection of links to:
Online journals
The Library of Congress and other online archives
Databases (e.g., of film credits)
Discussion groups (SCREENsite is associated with SCREEN-L,
the film/TV studies group)
Directories of other film/TV resources
Cripes! A Humor 'Zine (and subsidiary of SCREENsite)
SCREENsite encourages the participation of film/TV educators and
students. If you'd like to help in SCREENsite's ongoing construction
or if you have materials you'd like to make available on it, contact
Jeremy Butler at the address below.
There is no charge for accessing SCREENsite. One merely points
one's Web browser to the following URL:
http://www.sa.ua.edu/TCF/welcome.htm
Confused about what a "Web browser" and a "URL" are? Read on...
WHAT IS THE WORLD WIDE WEB?
The World Wide Web consists of thousands of computers throughout
the world that are hooked together through the Internet (the enormous
network of networks). Using a Web browser you may connect to one
of these computers and have it send you words, sounds, photographs,
maps, and other images--even moving images.
It's all quite automated and painless. With many browsers you just
place your cursor on a word or image and click a mouse button.
Suddenly you're touring the Louvre, searching the Library of
Congress's catalogue, or examining weather maps. These
words/images that bounce you around the Web are what are known as
"hypertext" links between one document and another.
Thus, you use a browser to look at Web documents (which contain
words, images, and sounds) and you move around the Web by
activating hypertext links. The links may connect documents at a
single computer, or they may toss you willy-nilly around the globe.
To find other global locations, the Web uses an addressing system
based on Uniform Resource Locators (URL). Each computer and each
document stored on each computer has a unique URL. They operate
much like a postal code and they look like this:
http://www.sa.ua.edu/TCF/welcome.htm
ftp://risc.ua.edu/pub/network
news:bit.listserv.screen-l
telnet://ua1vm.ua.edu
It is useful to know what each part of these addresses mean, but suffice
to say that one uses them as addresses for finding an entry into the
Web. Once you've made an initial connection somewhere, you then
just use hypertext links to jump from one document to the next.
After you tap into the Web, you can careen around it with abandon.
Making that initial connection, however, can be a bit tricky.
HOW DO YOU CONNECT TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB?
There are basically three ways to jack into the Web:
1. Use a browser on a local machine (hopefully the one in
front of which you're sitting),
2. Use a browser on a remote machine to which you've made
a live, "real-time" connection, or
3. Use e-mail to request Web documents and have them
e-mailed to you (minutes, hours, days) later.
As you might imagine, it is much preferable to run your browser
locally and, indeed, there are some Web things that can only be done
this way.
The problem is, a local browser demands a direct connection to the
Internet. Many university's computer networks (even faculty office
networks) do have such a connection. If yours does, look for software
called Netscape, Mosaic, or Lynx--the three most common Web
browsers (available for Windows, Mac, and Unix machines).
Some universities and commercial Internet providers such as Netcom
and PSINet permit a dial-up (via modem) connection to the
Internet--often using something called SLIP or PPP. In this case,
one still usually runs the browser on his/her home computer.
The second type of connection, where one connects to a remote
machine, means that the browser actually runs on the remote machine
and then sends text or images back to your local machine. For
instance, one can Telnet across the Internet to a remote machine that
runs a Web browser (often a no-graphics, text-based one like Lynx).
You can Telnet to either of the following locations to get a taste
of the Web:
www.law.indiana.edu
www.cc.ukans.edu
telnet.w3.org
On most of these systems, when you connect, you log in as "www"
(without the quotation marks). Then follow the instructions to move
around the Web. Many remote locations like this, however, do not
allow you to go directly to specific Web sites. Instead, you just
have to noodle around, moving from one hypertext link to another.
A new, significant development in the use of remote machines for
Web access is the introduction of Web browsers on popular
commercial services such as America Online and Prodigy. As of this
writing, these browsers were still in a developmental stage, but soon
you should be able to use AOL and Prodigy to bop around the Web.
Once again, the actual browser is not located on your computer, but on
AOL's or Prodigy's. It does the work there and then sends you the
results down your telephone line.
The third and most cumbersome way to travel the Web is via e-mail--
and it does not allow the retrieval of images or sounds. But, if you
have absolutely no other options, e-mail access can be done.
Basically, you send e-mail to a computer and request a specific Web
document. It automatically send you the document and also allows
you to use that document to retrieve other documents that are linked to
it.
For further details, send e-mail to
[log in to unmask] (preferred) or
[log in to unmask] (older address if the first fails)
What you put in the subject line does not matter. In the first
line of the body of the message, put:
send http://www.earn.net/gnrt/www.html
You will receive as a reply a simple document intended to help you
learn more about the Web.
HOW DO I GET MORE INFO ABOUT SCREENSITE?
Contact Jeremy Butler, SCREENsite's administrator:
E-mail [log in to unmask]
U.S. mail Department of Telecommunication and Film
P.O. Box 870152
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
Phone 205.348.6350
Fax 205.348.2754
WHO SPONSORS SCREENSITE?
SCREENsite is sponsored by the University of Alabama's
Telecommunication and Film Department, and the Center for
Communication and Educational Technology.