Introduction

• web browsers
• search engines
• chat rooms
• FTP
• images & animation
• regular video & audio
• streaming video & audio
• electronic whiteboards
• MUD's & MOO's
• videoconferencing
• web authoring tools
• push technologies
• site capturing
• intranets

References

Site Capturing

Software applications are currently available that allow users to download a web site from the Internet and make the site available on one's own computer or local area network. Typically, site capturing includes defining a starting page, and then specifying the level of links that are captured as well. If zero level of links are specified, then only the starting page is captured, if one level of links are specified, then the starting page and all of the pages linked from it are captured.

For educators, site capturing provides a number of advantages over accessing live web sites. First, the educators can limit the sites that students can access. This ensures students visit only those sites that have the information relevant to the class, so students can access the information they need quickly and students cannot access sites of dubious credibility or that are otherwise inappropriate. Second, educators can ensure a useful site is available into the future. A common problem for educators is that a site useful for a particular unit of study has been moved or removed when the unit of study is repeated during the next school year. By capturing a site, it can be archived and made available when the study is done again in the future. Third, in those buildings with limited bandwidth to the Internet, captured sites can be made available on the local area network, so Internet sites can be used where Internet access is limited.

Prior to capturing sites, educators must understand the size of the fields that are to be downloaded. As one extends the level of links, the number of pages increases very quickly; a simple site capture can quickly overwhelm the space available on a server to store the pages. Check with network administrators prior to beginning site capturing projects.

Resources for site capturing:

• HTTrack (Roche, 2006) is an application available for multiple operating systems under open source licensing that can be used to capture web sites.
• MM3 Web Assistant (MM3 Tools, 2006) is another site capture application available under open source licensing.