Wires was designed and written by Brown University students Lisa Eklund, Samantha Musher, Alexandra Scheps, and Andrea Tartaro as a final project for an educational software seminar (CS92). Created in conjunction with Classical High School multimedia lab director Adam Blumenthal, Wires is intended to teach high school students about the inner workings of the Internet, answering the following questions:
Wires was created in HTML with embedded HyperStudio stacks.
Wires can be run on both Macintosh and PC platforms, and requires the following:
Although Wires requires the use of a web browser, it can be run locally. If it is served, the server also needs a HyperStudio plug-in.
Students using Wires should be somewhat familiar with the Internet. Although no computer science or networking background is assumed, students should be comfortable using both electronic mail and the World Wide Web.
In order to capture students' attention, Wires needed a unifying theme, centered around the reasons why the students use the Internet. It had to be entertaining, and have general appeal. We decided upon the idea of using the Internet to find out about various events going on in the Providence entertainment scene. We added references to our theme wherever necessary to illustrate our points: when learning hostnames, users find the hostname of the Providence Performing Arts Center. The E-mail module is centered around how the e-mail would be sent if a student wanted to mail AS220 to be placed on their mailing list. Finally, the World Wide Web module shows students the Providence Phoenix web page before launching into a discussion of how web pages are accessed.
Wires was designed to appeal to a multitude of learning styles. Its target use in a multi-user lab prevented its creators from using sound. However, the program does integrate static graphics, animated graphics, text descriptions, and simulations in order to present and reinforce material in such a way as to maximize its appeal and effectiveness.
The program is organized into four distinct parts, or modules: the Internet, E-mail, the World Wide Web, and Internet Service Providers; additionally, there is also a glossary. The opening screen is a brief introduction to the project; at the bottom of the page is a forward button, and a menu bar with six buttons: Home, Find, Internet, E-mail, WWW, and ISP. This menu bar appears on each page of the program, to maximize mobility. Users are never trapped on any one screen; instead, they can always return to the opening screen, or go to the glossary or the beginning of each of the modules.
Internet: The first module, Internet, consists of a large, scrollable graphic illustrating the different components of the Internet, and a text frame below. Clicking on the different components of the graphic (either the images or their text labels) causes text to appear in the text frame explaining that component and how it works. Some of these descriptions also have hyperlinks which link to more detailed explanations. Within the explanation of packets, there is a link to the PACKET DEMO, which allows students to watch an e-mail message break up into packets and move through a wire to go across the network.
E-mail: The E-mail module is divided into three parts. The first screen is theme-based, explaining the different components of an e-mail while encouraging students to mail AS220 to be placed on their mailing list (NOTE: This e-mail is a simulation only. No actual mail is sent, and no connection to the Internet is expected). When the e-mail is completed, students click the Forward button on the bottom of the screen to go to an explanation of how the mail is sent. There are two ways to view this information: a static version, and an animated version. Students can see one or both, but the default is the static version. Students will see a graphic illustrating the different parts of the Internet which cooperate to transmit e-mail; below the graphic is a text explanation of how these components work. An E-mail Demo button at the top of the page takes the students to the animated version, where they learn the same concepts while seeing a graphical, animated representation of mail being transmitted from the sender's machine to the recipient's.
World Wide Web: The Web module is set up in the same way as the e-mail. The first screen shows a web browser displaying the Providence Phoenix home page. Various important aspects of a web page (such as HTML, a search engine, and HTTP) are pointed out and explained. Clicking the Forward button from there takes the user to a static page which illustrates and explains the various components in operation when a web page is requested and accessed. Clicking the Web Demo button on this page takes the student to the animated version of this page, where, they learn the same concepts while seeing a graphical, animated representation of a web page being transmitted from a server to a client machine.
Internet Service Provider: The Internet Service Provider (ISP) module consists of two pages, one static and one animated. The first page in the module consists of a graphical representation of the hardware components used by an ISP to allow its customers access to the Internet, followed by a text explanation. Clicking the ISP Demo button takes the student to the animated version of this page, where students learn the same concepts while seeing a graphical, animated representation of an ISP connecting a customer to the Internet.
FIND: The glossary, accessible from every page in the program, includes all of the major terms and concepts mentioned in the program, along with brief definitions.
Many people helped us along the way:
Abernathy, Ken and Tom Allen. Exploring the Digital Domain, Beta Edition. Boston: PWS Publishing Company, 1998.
Comer, Douglas E. Internetworking with TCP/IP, Volume 1: Principles, Protocols, and Architecture. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1995.
http://www.aol.com
Hunt, Craig. TCP/IP Network Administration. Sebastopol: O'Reilly Associates, Inc., 1992.
Tannenbaum, Andrew S. Computer Networks, Third Edition. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1996.