A Treasure Hunt on the Internet

Instructions:

This assignment will teach you how to search the Internet effectively and build a simple Intranet-based web page. In the future, you are likely to find that searching for information electronically is a more important skill than finding printed information.  For this assignment, you will create a Treasure Hunt Page with links that lead to web pages containing the information requested by the Treasure Hunt exercise.

Video 1: Dave Sullivan shows how to get started on the Treasure Hunt assignment by copying files, editing them with Nvu, saving your work, and testing that it is in the correct location for grading. (11 minutes)

Video 2: Dave Sullivan shows how to search the Internet to find an answer to one of the questions in the Treasure Hunt assignment, copy the answer to the Windows clipboard, build the answer into a hyperlink in your Treasure Hunt assignment, and test that the new hyperlink works correctly. (10 minutes)

Video 3: Dave Sullivan shows how to: Find an animated GIF cartoon-like image on the Internet, copy it to your computer, and place the image into a web page. Find a photograph on the Internet and build a pointer to it inside a web page. (14 minutes)

Step 1. Save a Treasure folder in the correct place of the College of Business network

Make a folder named ba271 in your Classwork folder on Cob-Storage. When you complete this step, you should have a folder named P:/classwork/ba271. Next, click on the following link to look in my public BA271 folder on the college's network //cob-storage.bus.oregonstate.edu/studentpdata/sullivan/public/ba271 . Note: the link in the previous sentence won't work if you are off campus or if you are using Monzilla FireFox as your browser. Inside the BA271 folder, you should find a Treasure folder. Copy it and all its contents to your P:\classwork\ba271 folder. This process will create a folder whose name name is p:\classwork\ba271\treasure.

Step 2. Complete the Treasure Hunt (index.htm) page

• Search the Internet to find appropriate answers to the scavenger-hunt questions, then place links to the answers in the index.htm page within your Treasure folder. 
  • Spend several hours learning how to use search engines. Try several and compare how they work.
  •  If you make bloopers or don't follow the instructions correctly, we will deduct points for your errors.
• You only need to answer 22 of the 26 items. If you don't find answers to some of the Treasure Hunt items, modify those items to say "I did not answer this item." Note: If you answer all 26 items and make errors in some, we will deduct points for the errors. Feel free to complain to us that you correctly answered 22 items, but don't expect us to listen to your complaints.
• To complete many of the items, you will need to copy the URL's (Uniform Resource Locators) you find on the Internet into the appropriate links in the Treasure Hunt questions. For example, if one of the Treasure Hunt questions could be answered by building a link to Sun Microcomputer Systems' Home Page (located at http://www.sun.com/), then you would copy that http address into the relevant link.
• I want you to rewrite your answers to all questions in the first person. For example, if the original question asks you to, "Find a coupon with a 20% discount", then your revised answer might say , "I found this coupon for 20% off the regular price at Joe's Car Wash."
• Hide actual web addresses by placing them inside hyperlinks. So do not build links similar to, "I found this coupon for 20% off the regular price at www.JoesCarWash.com.
• Write sentences so the hyperlinks are formed from noun phrases that indicate where the link will lead. Thus, you should not build hyperlinks that ask the reader to Click Here to learn more about Microsoft. Instead, you should build hyperlinks that ask the reader to learn more about Microsoft.
• Change the text in hyperlinks to reflect the sources you actually use. For example, when you are done, your hyperlinks should not say, "Company1, Company2, and Company3". Instead, these links should be revised to look more like "Nike, Ford, and Northwestern Mutual Financial Services."
• Insert your name in:
  • The page title; that is, the blue bar at the top of the window. For example this web page's title is "Treasure Hunt"
  • The page heading; that is, the first line of the page itself. For example, this web page's heading is "A Treasure Hunt on the Internet".
  • The page footing; that is, whatever boilerplate stuff appears at the bottom. For example, this web page's footing tells who maintains the page and contains hyperlinks to related websites.

  You should know that many students in prior terms have failed to complete this step. So if you don't understand the difference between a "title bar" and a "page heading," brace yourself for losing several points when the assignment is graded.
   

• Test your work. Do all the links function correctly? Does your webpage have pictures with hyperlinks, and if so, do those hyperlinks function correctly?
• Take pride in your work. The goal here is not just to find the requested locations, but also to edit and revise this page so it looks good and reads well.

Step 3. Test your Treasure Hunt page

Make sure your work is in the proper location for grading. To do this, click on your name in this Treasure Hunt listing. If for some reason your Treasure Hunt answers cannot be accessed by clicking on your link in the Treasure Hunt listing, then return to Step1 above, and check to see if you put your work in the wrong location.

If for some reason you cannot complete this step successfully, send a message describing the situation to Dave Sullivan via e-mail.

This website was created and is maintained by Dave Sullivan.
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