• The Internet is a huge collection of computers around the world.
• These computers are all linked together and they can "talk" to each other, sharing information.
• If your computer is connected to the Internet, it can connect to millions of other computers in many different parts of the world.

1. You can do research and look up cool things you want to know, faster than ever before!
2. You can send e-mails, or electronic mail, to your friends and family.
3. You can play games with kids down the street or on the other side of the world!
4. You and your family can buy things and have them delivered right to your door!

You may have noticed that many web addresses start with "www". "www" stands for World Wide Web. The World Wide Web is a HUGE group of web pages about more topics than you can even imagine! You can search them using "search engines". Once you find a page with a topic of interest, you can view other related pages by jumping between them using "links" or "hyperlinks".

Almost all pages have hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are spots on the page that when clicked, will take you to a location related to the subject of the hyperlink. Hyperlinks are usually a different color than the rest of the text. They are often blue or red but sometimes they're hard to see. In nearly all the Desert Survivors pages the hyperlinks are dark blue and are often underlined or italicized.

Another feature that helps you identify hyperlinks is their magical ability to change your mouse cursor (the little arrow you see move when you move the mouse) into a cute little hand. This is often your best clue in the hunt for hyperlinks. So, are you ready to hunt hyperlinks? Pick the link below that you think is a real hyperlink!

Once you have clicked on a link, it will often change colors. This way you can tell where you have been. On Desert Survivors pages, the links will turn white after you visit them. The only exception is the very front page, or "Home Page". The Home Page acts as a central navigating point and will often look the same everytime you visit. In most websites, you can reach almost anything on the site with hyperlinks from the Home Page.

Pictures can also be hyperlinks. It is harder to tell if a picture is a hyperlink so you may need to just put your mouse over all the pictures and see if they do anything.

Sometimes one picture will have multiple hyperlinks. This is called an "image map". The picture in "Meet the Hosts" is an image map. There are three hyperlinks on the picture. One for each host and one that will take you back to the home page. Move your mouse over the picture and see what happens.

All of the pages on the World Wide Web are linked to other pages. If you are interested in something, you can search for it using a search engine, like "Ask Jeeves for Kids", to find a long list of hyperlinks. Remember, a lot of sites online may not be kid-friendly for a variety of reasons, so using kid oriented search engines is not a bad way to go. Yahooligans is a pretty good one and you may want to try Kidsclick too! Once you've typed in your topic of interest, click the "search" button and you will get back a list of sites. Select the page you want by clicking on the hyperlink.

You are able to view all of these great pages with your "browser". There are all different kinds of browsers. "Explorer" is a popular one, but you may have heard of others like "Firefox" and "Netscape". Though each browser has its own strengths and weaknesses, they are all pretty similar for what we'll talk about today.

This site is set up so you have a lower probability of getting lost. The left side and bottom of each window has "Navigation Frames". Everytime you open a new link, it opens right in the center of the navigation frames. No matter what page you're viewing, you can always get back to the Home Page by either clicking "Take me Home" on the bottom frame, or by finding a Desert Survivors logo and clicking on it. The navigation frames also have links to the full list of episodes, the Activities page, the Family Fun page, this page, the Teacher Login page, the Site Information page, and much more! Within each episode page there are more links to explore; all the underlined hyperlinks lead to topics related to the word that is hyperlinked. If you want to know more about that word or topic, click the hyperlink and it will take you to another page. If you decide you want to go back, click on the "back" button in your browser.

Another fun feature of Desert Survivors Online is our detailed glossary. If you do not know a word and it happens to be dark blue and italicized, click on it and the glossary will open to that word! Some glossary entries have pictures and most have creative spelling pronounciation guides. When you're done with the glossary simply close the window or click on the page you were looking at before.