This document is to assist you in using resources available to you on the Internet in this course.
The computers in Goddard 114 are available to you whenever Biology faculty are around. You only need to bring a Macintosh 3.5" floppy disc with you for storage of your information. You may use these computers for any biology-related work. The computers have word-processing (Microsoft Word), number-crunching (Microsoft Excel), charting (Cricket Graph and Microsoft Excel), and internet-surfing (Netscape) software installed. These applications can help you in writing your lab report, amplified abstracts, and studying.
I will not go into basic use of these software applications here, but I do want to give you more detail about the course information I am creating for you on the Internet. As we go through the course, I will be putting my lecture notes, annotations on the reading assignments, the laboratory exercises, and exams from previous semesters on-line. This is a huge amount of work, so you will have to be somewhat patient with me. I will try my best to keep up-to-date, but there will likely be a lag of a few days in getting things on the server for you. You use Netscape software to get to the information I am putting on the Internet. You can also access this information from any computer with connections to the Internet. The information files I produce assume you will be using the latest version of Netscape on your computer, if this assumption is invalid, my home page will provide a way to get the latest version of Netscape.
Start up Netscape by double-clicking on its icon. The software will take you to some default home-page (perhaps the biology home page). You should select the File Open Location option from the menubar (there are other ways to do this but this one works). In the dialog box type: http://koning.ecsu.ctstateu.edu and then click on OK. This will take you to my "home page". Feel free to browse my page and any links (highlighted words) you might be interested in.
As you read my home page you will notice a paragraph about our course. The syllabus and course schedule are two links in this paragraph. If you click on the syllabus link, you will be shown the syllabus (no, duh!) just as you received it the first day. That is our contract for operating the course this semester. If you click on the course schedule link, you will be taken to the most important page here!
This course schedule page is similar to the one you received the first day, but with very important differences! You will see that as we proceed, this schedule gets updated to reflect what we have actually done. Second, the entries in the schedule will be converted to links as we proceed through the course. You might want to set a bookmark for this page (or put it on your hotlist).
The lecture topic links will take you to my lecture notes for that day. Please note that these are a faculty member's notes. Lots of details are missing because the notes are designed to simply trigger thoughts stored in my mind. They won't read like a book and they are guaranteed to be incomplete. Let the reader beware! They are a poor substitute for your attendance in class!
The reading assignment links will take you to comments and questions that come to my mind as I read the chapters. These notes might be read to help you understand key ideas and to resolve any errors found in this first-edition textbook. Again, these are a supplement to your own reading of the book. They would be an extremely poor substitute for reading the text itself. Let the reader beware!
The laboratory exercise links will take you to a copy of the lab exercise. This is probably not useful to you at all. These links are provided for people who want to snoop into what I am doing in our lab. Users are likely to be faculty from other universities surfing the net for ideas. You will receive a much better-formatted printed version of the exercises!
The exam links will take you to some sample questions from previous exams. I am unlikely to use these exact questions on your exams, but they might guide you in studying for the real exams. Also, since some students have access to previous exams from friends who are former bio majors, etc., I thought this area would "level the field" for the rest of you. I would comment that I am not likely to use much multiple choice any more...I've outgrown that bad habit. You are much more likely to have an essay exam that may require diagrams and a lot more thinking, and maybe even creativity, on your part.
Again, I will try to keep the links as up-to-date as I can. I will make a special effort to be up-to-date near the exams. Being assistant department chairman, though, makes my time unpredictable, however. It turns out that I am doing even more this semester in terms of chair duties than in previous years...not by choice but by departmental need. Therefore, please be patient with me; this is a "free" service, not part of our syllabus, so there are no guarantees, only disclaimers.
One very important final note: since I am updating this material frequently, you must RELOAD the course schedule to be sure you are getting the latest version. Most browser software (Netscape, etc.) stores pages you visit on your hard-drive; when you revisit a page (like our course schedule) it usually puts the old-stored version back on-screen. To force it to look again at the real page as it is updated, you RELOAD the page. There is a reload button, or a menubar command for reloading. The reloaded page should have the most-recent links and other information that is up-to-date. So RELOAD, RELOAD, RELOAD!
Go back to the Course Schedule.