The internet is a very large network that joins computers all over the world together, so that information can pass between them. Once a device is connected, it can reach information stored on a computer thousands of kilometres away almost instantly.
What the internet lets us do
With an internet connection we can read news from any country, look up a word we do not know, watch a lesson we missed, send a message to a relative abroad, fill in a form for a government office, or study from a book we do not own a paper copy of. All of this happens because the information is not stored on our own device, it is stored somewhere else and the internet fetches it for us when we ask.
Browser and website
Having internet access alone is not enough to look at online material. We also need an application installed that can open it, and this kind of application is called a browser. Chrome, Firefox, and Safari are common examples. A website is a collection of information, made of pages containing photos, videos, or documents. Every website has its own unique address, called a web address or URL.
A useful comparison
Students often mix up the internet, a browser, and a website, so here is a comparison that keeps them apart. Think of the internet as the road network of a whole country. A browser is the vehicle you travel in. A website is a particular building you drive to. The road being there is not enough on its own, you still need a vehicle. And having a vehicle is not enough either, you need to know which building you are going to. All three are separate things, and you need all three.
Search engine
If we do not know the exact web address of a website, we can still find it. A search engine lets us type in a few key words, and it shows us a list of websites related to those words. Common search engines include Google, Bing, and Yahoo. If we already know the exact web address, we can skip the search engine entirely and type the address straight into the browser.
One thing worth understanding early is that a search engine does not decide what is true. It finds pages that match your words and puts them in an order, and pages near the top are not automatically the most correct ones. This is why two people searching the same words can end up believing different things. Checking who wrote a page, and whether other pages agree, matters more than which result came first.
E-book
An e-book is the digital form of a book. It can be read on a computer, a smartphone, or a special e-book reader. Most e-books come as PDF files, so an app that can open PDF files is needed to read them. Since an e-book takes up very little storage space, thousands of them can fit on a single computer, something that would be impossible with paper books.
Email is a way to send and receive information electronically. It has made sending letters through the post far less common than before. Using email, we can send words, pictures, sound, and video from one place to another almost instantly. To send or receive an email, we need a computer or phone, internet access, and an email account with a service such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or Outlook.
An email address always has the same shape: a name, then the at sign, then the name of the service. Everything before the at sign is the particular person, and everything after it is the service holding that account. This is why no two email addresses in the world can be exactly the same, in the same way that no two houses on one street share a house number.
Advantages of email
It arrives almost instantly, costs nothing beyond the internet connection, can carry photos and documents, reaches many people at once, and keeps a copy of everything sent and received.
Disadvantages of email
It needs electricity, a device, and a connection, none of which are available everywhere. Unwanted mail can fill the inbox, an account can be broken into, and a message sent to the wrong address cannot be taken back.
A very common mix-up is treating the browser and the search engine as the same thing, because on most devices the search box sits right inside the browser window. They are not the same. The browser is the application that displays pages. The search engine is one particular website that the browser opens for you, whose job is to find other websites. You can use a browser without ever using a search engine, simply by typing an address you already know.
TODO: Add YouTube video ID for Internet, Email, and Browser
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