This May Be Obsolete

Since some webmasters often change the design of their websites, the links on our treasure hunt pages may get "not found" error messages.
Though some of these may still be functional, we do not maintain this section of our website anymore.
We have left these online as examples of how to create a similar activity for your own students.
At the time we began this project, many teachers did not have websites, so we offered space on our server for teachers to share their activities.
Now, it is very easy for teachers to put up their own websites and create activities like these for their own students.

About the Internet and Online Newspapers
An Internet Treasure Hunt for ESL Students

Obsolete Page

Some of the links have changed, so this treasure hunt is currently not usable.

Visit these links to find the answers to the questions.

1. ILC Glossary of Internet Terms

There are lots of new technical words used in Internet studies. This is a glossary or dictionary of those words. Find the definitions in the ILC glossary. If it is a long definition just write down the first two or three sentences.

What is a URL?
What is a server?
What is a host?
What is HTML?
What is HTTP?

2. URL's: Internet Domain Names for Different Types of Organisations

URL's are made up of domain names. There are diffferent domain types for different types of organisations where web servers are located

What are the six main domain names for different types of organisations?

3. URL's: Different Domain Names for Different Countries

Country domain names are also parts of URL's. Each country has a different country domain name.

What is the country domain for your country-of-birth?
What is the country domains for Australia?
Make a list of the country domains of all the other people in the class

4. Atlas of the World Wide Web

Read this page to find out how old the World Wide Web is.

When was the World Wide Web first developed?
Where was the World Wide Web first developed?

5. Internet Growth

Hobbes Internet timeleine gives a history of the Internet. Near the bottom of the timeline there are a number of graphs and tables that show how much the Internet has grown. Scroll down to the graphs and tables and answer these questions

How many Internet hosts were there in August 1981?
How many Internet hosts were there in January 1989?
How many Internet hosts were there in January 1994?
How many Internet hosts were there in January 1998?

6. The Irresponsible Internet Statistics Generator

According to the author of this page it is called the "Iresponsible Internet Statistics Generator" because

(He is) not a statistician, and did not derive these figures (him)self;
The integrity of the first statistic has not been verified;
Even if the statistics are currently correct, there is no way that the Internet can sustain such growth; and (He) want(s) to discourage people from using data generated here as if it's gospel."

However, you can still get an approximate idea about future growth from this page

How many web sites are there now?
How many people may be using the Internet now?
How many people may be using the Internet in one year from now?
How many people may be using the Internet in two years from now?

7. Online Newspapers

These sites all contain links to online newspapers:

Find the links to online newspapers or news services from your country-of-origin. Your first task is to read and summarise the main national story in the latest edition of the newspaper. Your second task is find the weather forecast for today in the capital city of that country. (Note: Weather information is not available in all these newspapers. If you can't find the weather information for the capital city of your country-of-origin, get the weather forecast for today in Melbourne, Australia)

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