Appendix A

Commonly Used Terms

BBs Bulletin boards, a type of conferencing service, allows readers to leave messages for each other. This asynchronous messaging is a popular way for students and teachers to interact with one another are favored by many online educators.

Chatlines Chat, MOO (Multiple-User Dungeon or Design), MUD (MUD Object Oriented), MUSH (Multi-User Shared Environment) use telnet as their base protocol. These programs support a variety of "talk" components that allow users to type synchronous or "real time" messages to each other. The most popular is probably Internet Relay Chat (IRC); however, in the field of rhetoric and composition, MUSHes are more numerous. These virtual communities of MUSHes and MUDs are user created multi-dimensional cooperatives which flourish on Internet. Many educators communicate with their online students in these type of textually created worlds. Rooms, objects, conditions, and the like are available to users with text descriptions of varying complexity.

Domains Each file located on the Internet must be housed on a computer located within a specific domain. The most common are (a) education (edu), (b) commercial (com), (c) organization (org), (d) government (gov), (e) networks (net), (f) international (int), and (g) military (mil) (Levine & Baroudi, 1993, p.23). An estimated 900,000 Web addresses are already registered, of which about 90% have the .com suffix. An estimated 85,000 new Web addresses are registered monthly (GVA, 1998).

Email Email, the coined word for electronic mail, is perhaps the most widely used of all Internet services.

Emoticons This icons are used to transmit feelings and emotions in lieu of body language.

FTP File Transfer Protocol, a standardized method of moving electronic files from computer to computer, enables users to access and retrieve files from computers connected to the Internet. These files can carry almost any type of computer information--text documents, graphics, software, sounds, etc. Electronic files can be transferred from one host computer to another, and even from personal computers connected to host computers via modem or via specific software (such as "Fetch" or "FTP"). In order to use ftp, a person generally needs to know the specific file name and where it is located on a host computer.

Gopher A Internet protocol that is a menu driven system allowing textual access to files on a host machine. Before the advent of browsers and hypertext in 1994, this was the most common way to access text.

Http The most favored of all protocols, presently, is http, the common name for hypertext transfer protocol, which is used with the World Wide Web. If a person has some type of browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer and her machine has enough memory, she can access text, graphic, video, and audio files

Listserv Listserv and listprocs are automated software programs which act as email distribution centers for people who have common interests or concerns. Many are professional. If a person subscribes to the listserv and if it is an open list, she will start receiving the list mail sometimes within minutes. Many lists deal with hundreds of messages a day.

Telnet This protocol is the ability to virtually transport into a host computer. If the user has proper user permissions, she can scan files, clean up directories or engage in discussions with other users.

URL A browser must use the uniform resource locator to find a specific site on the Internet. The URL consists of both the protocol and the address of the file.
Usenet This loose affiliation of computers all over the world store and switch messages, allowing for a wide variety of access. While many point out that USENET is not the same as the Internet (depending on the specificity of the definition of the Internet), nearly everyone who has access to the Internet in general has access to USENET. Some newsgroups are obviously more popular than others, but according to "Hobbes' Internet Timeline," there were about 72,755 articles posted to newsgroups every day in 1994 (n. p.). These groups and their articles are loosely organized according to subject, which is indicated by the prefix of the group.

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