With a wiki-hosted paperless classroom, teachers can do more than simply direct students and parents to homework or classroom assignments. The classroom website includes multiple web pages, each containing links to documents, PowerPoint presentations, web-based testing sites, interactive learning stations and virtually anything a teacher wants to provide for students and parents.

A paperless classroom becomes the epicenter of any K-12 teacher’s class. It is a marvelous source of communication, as the teacher blog and podcast give parents several options to stay tuned into what their children are doing and what the teacher has planned.

Student websites, contained in an online Content Management System,completely controlled and secured by the teacher, create a remarkable opportunity for students to share what they’ve learned via web-based instruction. They can place writing, pictures, graphics or virtual presentations on their private student websites, which the teacher can grade from any Internet-connected computer, as unlike the networked class, the paperless classroom, is completely web-based.

With a classroom website, teachers and students can throw away their papers and folders. Anything they ever wish to keep or return to at a later time is housed in a secure online file cabinet. This is a part of web-based instruction that all K-12 students love; they never lose the assignments they’ve worked so hard to complete.

Teachers and parents love the communication factor. The teacher blog, podcast and activities page keep parents informed of everything that is going on in the classroom, including links to the same presentations that their children see in the classroom.

Technology continues to evolve and the paperless classroom is evolving right along with it.

Create an amazing interactive classroom website, complete with individual private student websites, that will have students racing to complete assignments. You can also earn up to 9 semester hours online, building your classroom website. Learn more now at ThePaperlessClassroom.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_Barnes

Search engines are tools that allow you to search for information available on the Web using keywords and search terms. Rather than searching the Web itself, however, you are actually searching the engine’s database of files.

Search engines are actually three separate tools in one. The spider is a program that “crawls” through the Web, moving from link to link, looking for new web pages. Once it finds new sites or files, they are added to the search engine’s index. This index is a searchable database of all the information that the spider has found on the Web. Some engines index every word in each document, while others select certain words. The search engine itself is a piece of software that allows users to search the engine’s database. Clearly, an engine’s search is only as good as the index it’s searching.

When you run a query using a search engine, you’re really only searching the engine’s index of what’s on the Web, as opposed to the entire Web. No one search engine is capable of indexing everything on the Web – there’s just too much information out there! Additionally, many spiders cannot or will not enter databases or index files. Consequently, much of the information excluded in search engine queries includes breaking news, documents, multimedia files, images, tables, and other data. Collectively, these types of resources are referred to as the deep or invisible Web. They’re buried deep in the Web and are invisible to search engines. While many search engines feature some areas of the deep web, most of these resources require special tools to unearth them.

Estimates vary, but the deep web is much larger than the surface web. Approximately 500 more times information is located on the deep web as exists on the surface web. This consists of multimedia files, including audio, video, and images; software; documents; dynamically changing content such as breaking news and job postings; and information that’s stored on databases, for example, phone book records, legal information, and business data. Clearly, the deep web has something to offer almost any student researcher.

The easiest way to find information on the deep web is to use a specialized search engine. Many search engines index a very small portion of the deep web; however, some engines target the deep web specifically. If you need to find a piece of information that’s likely to be classified as part of the deep web, search engines that focus on such content are your best bet.

Like surface web engines, deep web search engines may also sell advertising in the form of paid listings. They differ in their coverage of deep web content and offer dissimilar advanced search options. Engines that search the deep web can be classified as first vs. second generation, individual vs. meta, and/or separate vs. collated retrieval, just as with surface web engines. Thus, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with the options that are available and gradually add the best engines to your bag of research tricks.

Let’s look at two popular deep web search engines for an illustration:

1. Complete Planet (www.completeplanet.com) is a free commercial search engine. It acts as a gateway to other search services, providing links to over 70,000 search sites. For easy browsing, the links are organized by subject into a “browse tree.” You can also search their links by keyword, which will retrieve a relevance-ranked list of results. While they do sell advertising, paid results are clearly labeled as such.

2. Scirus (http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/), in contrast, is more limited in scope. An academic engine, it does not sell advertising or feature paid listings. Rather than trying to provide access to the entire deep web, it focuses on scientific content. Users can search over 167 million scientific web pages, databases, and journals with Scirus. Results can be sorted in several ways, including by relevance and source. Scirus is provided free by Elsevier, a company that also markets databases to individuals and institutions.

Obviously, Scirus is a more scholarly search engine than Complete Planet, and thus is more appropriate for your academic research needs. Well, assuming that you’re conducting research for a physics or psychology class, of course! If literature’s your thing, perhaps you might want to try out another academic deep web engine, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/) or the New York Public Library’s holdings (http://www.nypl.org/).

When doing research for a class, you need to be just as discriminating with deep web search engines as you are with other online tools. Always look for an engine’s advertising policy, and consider where it gets its funding. Look for non-profit engines that only index information from reputable sources. Search engines with a filter are a plus; for example, Scirus’s engine discards non-scientific web sites and relies mainly on information from the top-level domains “.edu” and “.org”.

As with the rest of the Internet, the deep web can be an excellent resource – but only when used with caution!

Copyright Kelly Garbato, 2005

Kelly Garbato is an author, ePublisher, and small business owner. She recently self-published her first book, “13 Lucky Steps to Writing a Research Paper,” now available at Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com) or through Peedee Publishing (http://www.peedeepublishing.com).

To learn more about the author, visit her web site at http://www.kellygarbato.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kelly_Garbato

By looking at the trends of today we can begin to develop a image of what the Web of the future will look like. I believe the Web will improve and grow in a way that will dwarf its present existence and will improve and enrich everyone’s lives way beyond what we can imagine today. The Net will become as integrated into everyone’s everyday lives as much as, and even more so, than the television or phone (in developed nations first, then everywhere). Television, communications and the Internet will merge.

The Web will become increasingly realistic, interactive, and three dimensional. Two dimensional displays will evolve into three dimensional displays. And the Web will probably incorporate more than just the two senses of seeing and hearing. It will first be incorporated into all other electronics found in household appliances, copy machines, automobiles, and anything else with a microchip. Then it will be integrated directly into our brains.

I also envisage this new Web creating an unimaginably sophisticated data sphere that surrounds and envelops the world like a warm electronic blanket, connecting everyone and everything. And it may some day become an autonomous and sentient entity in its own right that we may even come to depend on for life itself.

When a person switches on his wireless Web chip and connects with the Net, he’ll be looking at and interacting with the Web of the future. He’ll manipulate objects, click on links, download information, and communicate with anyone by simply thinking it. In fact, when he navigates to a grocery store to buy food, for instance, he’ll be able to “pick them up”, “feel them” and even “smell” the food he wants to buy just by thinking the appropriate thoughts.

In the future, Web-based software agents will constantly build dynamic lists and instructions to help people in personal and professional activities. These software agents are subroutines, or small programs, which may be part of a responsive ‘Internet Operating System’ that serves humanity, or possibly even destroy it. Programs may become responsible for doing some of the basic thinking that we get stuck routinely doing today. Additionally, it may be responsible for storing a percentage of our memories as well.

The Web has already become something we rely on for memory, and that reliance will only grow. We’d rather look something up on Google two or three times instead of trying to remember it initially. And eventually, we’ll come to rely on the Web for memories and immediate information so that it will seem like we are missing a part of our own brain when not “jacked in” to the Net, to borrow a phrase from science fiction writer William Gibson. The Net will be such a part of our existence that we may even feel profound separation and isolation when not connected.

The Evolution of the Web Display

Of course we’re not going to jump from flat screen LCD monitors of today to displays that exist only “in our minds”. Three dimensional displays may be the bridge. There is a device in existence today called a Heliodisplay(TM) that produces holograms which exist in three dimensions and are created with photographic projection using advanced laser technology. It’s possible that all displays will employ this technology in the future. The gaming industry ceaselessly works at making their artificial gaming experiences more realistic and is a powerful driving force in computer display technology.

The Web of our future will first be truly device independent where each piece of equipment is a different window that peers into the same global Web. From handheld devices not unlike the Star Trek Communicators, to cell phones, televisions, automobile dashboards, embedded refrigerator displays and MP3 players, all will be portals into the same World Wide Web.

And of course everything will be connected. Instead of applications running on individual personal computers and devices, applications will operate on the Net and be accessible to anyone, creating a loose Internet Operating System.

Ultimately, the Web of our future will most likely abandon standard two dimensional and even three dimensional displays and instead be projected right onto our corneas, skipping the middle man, so to speak.

FutureWeb is Closer Than We Think

Already demonstrated in the lab is the ability to cause a computer to react to thought alone. Duke University neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis works in the field of BMI (brain-machine interface). In an experiment involving a monkey, a computer and a monitor, Nicolelis and his team successfully caused the monkey to communicate with and control a robotic arm through its brain’s neural signals alone.

The monkey’s brain activity and signals were first monitored with numerous electrodes inside its scalp while it manipulated a joystick. The scientists taught the monkey to move the joystick with its arms to accomplish movement on the monitor. Nicolelis’ team then took the joystick away, but continued everything else the same way. Since the monkey’s brain was hooked up to the computer, each time it had the thought of moving its arms, the desired affect actually happened anyway on the monitor, triggered by the monkey’s thoughts alone. In fact, the monkey was even able to control an artificial arm over the Web 600 miles away in the same manner.

There are two important applications for this technology that are driving its research: medicine and war, two constants in all of human history. Doctors will someday be able to attach a prosthetic arm to a patient, wire it up to her brain, and succeed in enabling her to control the prosthetic fingers by simply thinking it.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) manages the research for the U.S. Department of Defense. In 2003, DARPA invested $23 million in BMI programs, including the one at Duke University cited above. Their goal is to allow soldiers to control weapons of all kinds by thought only. These super soldiers will be able to stealthily navigate through a battlefield willing robotic gliders above to drop their payloads of smart bombs on the enemy over the next hill, without endangering their own lives.

Ethical questions aside, brain-machine interfacing will someday mature and become integrated into our lives. Since the Web is already such a part of our world, the marriage of the two is inevitable.

This technology can be utilized in the other direction as well. Just like a thought can produce computer behavior, the computer will someday be able to send back sensory data other than just sight and sound. If a computer is hooked directly up to the brain, then smell, taste and touch can be affected as well. The Web will literally come to life.

The Semantic Web, Web 2.0 and the Collaboration of Humanity

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, wrote an illuminating book called Weaving the Web that I recommend all Web professionals read. Among the many profound ideas expressed are two concepts relevant here. One is the Semantic Web, which is explained as “The Web of data with meaning in the sense that a computer program can learn enough about what the data means to process it.” Metadata is the term used for data about data. Most Web pages today have embedded in the html code metadata that gives information about the Web page. Eventually, this information will become much more robust, allowing more intelligent searches to become a reality.

The Semantic Web may have the potential to help make the Internet an entity in its own right. Parallel processing, the connecting of computers to make super computers, has been in existence for some time now. In fact, that’s how the human brain operates, by conducting many operations at the same time.

The other fascinating idea Berners-Lee expressed in this landmark book is that his original idea for the Web involved much more of a two-way exchange of information. His original vision for the Web was one of collaboration. He wanted people to be able to post information to the Web as easily as it was to view information. Unfortunately, the latter has been embraced more readily by the general population.

But now we see the emergence of “Web 2.0″, a fairly new term that describes an innovative type of website that is built on the participation of its users. Blogs, wikis Podcasts and social networks all fall under the Web 2.0 umbrella. Today we are finally achieving what Berners-Lee had in mind all along. With websites such as MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Squidoo, and Digg, non-technical users can now post information and contribute to the Web as easily as they can access it. The Web of the future will embrace this concept even more, causing its speed of growth to eclipse today’s rate.

It’s not difficult to see that the Web could be a vast parallel processing farm, that given enough artificial intelligence programming, the infusion of Semantic Web systems, and the constant additions from billions of intelligent beings (namely humans), it could have the potential of becoming something of a unified intelligence, a data sphere that surrounds the planet and is more powerful that the sum of its parts.

This concept of technology’s exponential growth turning onto something we cannot even imagine with the possibility of the Web becoming sentient is not new. Vernor Vinge, a retired Professor of Mathematics at San Diego State University, a computer scientist and a science fiction author, wrote about the Singularity in a 1993 essay.

A super-intelligence emerging out of the Web was also written about by Kevin Kelly in Wired Magazine in August 2005 and also published on KurzweilAI.com.

“. . . we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence.

This planet-sized computer is comparable in complexity to a human brain. Both the brain and the Web have hundreds of billions of neurons (or Web pages). Each biological neuron sprouts synaptic links to thousands of other neurons, while each Web page branches into dozens of hyperlinks. That adds up to a trillion “synapses” between the static pages on the Web. The human brain has about 100 times that number—but brains are not doubling in size every few years. The Machine [the Web of the future] is.”

An online search will yield many examples of bizarre concepts that existed only in science fiction later becoming reality. The Web is something that Earth has never seen before. It not only has the potential to connect everyone, but it can also extend every brain and grow exponentially. It may take a lot longer than anyone thinks, but eventually the Web of our future will be immensely different and much more powerful than anyone can possibly imagine today.

Jason OConnor is CEO of Oak Web Works, LLC (http://www.oakwebworks.com), an e-strategy firm.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jason_OConnor

The continued growth of the Internet has kept web designers in high demand. Web designers are responsible for the day-to-day design and creation of web sites. Web designers design the layout and create the content to build and create web pages for clients. Web designers work in a creative environment where they use graphic design, navigation design, and page layout to create web pages. These designers are also well trained in programming languages like HTML, XHTML, and JavaScript.

Training:

Degree programs and training courses in web design will teach the basics of website design. Coursework will generally cover the basics of web design, and specific techniques used for Internet graphics and animation. Training program in web design will typically introduce students to the concept of designing web sites for applications such as e-commerce and personal sites. Programming languages such as HTML, XML, and Java will also be covered in coursework. The classes are usually hands-on and provide students with skills that are necessary for success in the workplace.

Outlook:

Job opportunities for professional web designer are endless. The Internet provides a multitude of opportunities for designers around the world. The majority of web designers are salaried employees who often work for design firms and advertising and marketing companies. There are even web consulting firms that specifically build and manage websites for client organizations. However, a good number of web designers are self-employed and find full time work just by word of mouth. The median expected salary for a typical web designer in the U.S. is $50,372. Salaries can reach much higher depending on how much experience you have.

Mary Hart is an in-house writer for Online-Degrees-Today.com and has been writing about online art & design degree programs since 2004. To find out more information about earning your online web design degree, click here.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mary_Hart