During the first years I taught Internet basics, a substantial portion of the stuents' grade came from daily activity logs and journals entries. The daily activity log was  important because it documented how the students spentn their and helped them practice academic and Internet skills such as:

• Journal writing
• Improving written communication skill
• Critical thinking and evaluation of information
• Importing Bookmarks
• Exporting Bookmarks
• Opening a file with Netscape
• Creating bookmarks
• Creating hierarchical bookmarks
• Editing bookmark headings
• Annotating bookmarks
• Cutting from Netacape and pasting to bookmarks

An easy and efficient way to keep a log is to make use of Netscape's bookmarking facilities. Here is an example of what a log may look like. A log need not look  exactly like this, but it should be well-organized and contain the same basic components. Let's take a look at the different parts and how they were created:

The following procedures should be done from the Edit Bookmark screen.

 Heading - The words, Brian's Bookmarks, were created automatically by Netscape. The program gets the name from the information in the Mail and News Preferences. Your school may have system protection software that prevents this  type of editing.  Don't be too concerned if someone else's name shows up. This is a problem of using Netscape on a Network. You will be getting lessons on how to deal with this problem. For now, don't be concerned.

Date and Time - Since the log must be printed and handed in periodically, each day must appear as a separate heading. Students can create a New Bookmark and provide information such as date, time, and comments.

Description and/or Comments - If students just want to make comments without making a link to a site, they can use the New Bookmark option. Type a heading for your comments in the Name box of the View Bookmarks dialog box. Then type  your comments in the Description area. If appropriate, you can cut information right from the page and place it in the Description area.

Rating (This is Optional) - Use a rating scale of 1 to 4 stars, with four being the  highest rating. IMPORTANT: The rating scale is for educational value, not entertainment value. Of course there are many sites that are both entertaining and educational. If students want to give an entertainment rating, they should be sure to  mention that in their comments.

Note: During free surfing time, almost every place students visit and spend time should become a log entry. When they visit a site, they should bookmark it. If  necessary, change the Name so it indicates the nature of the site and put in a description and/or comments.

Is the ebola virus a threat to us in the United States?

Here's a step by step example of how I might create the travelog as I do my research.

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