I like the idea of internet searching as a quest....because that is often what it turns into. Here's what I mean...
I am currently teaching PowerPoint Presentation skills to Primary school children. While thinking about a suitable topic for a presentation, I decided to work with animated films. This was only partly because children like them: I think they are fantastic....and my favourite is Coraline.
To create a presentation, I wanted to find out more about the film, the story and, in particular, to find good images. So, I started googling. The first source of basic information came as no surprise: Coraline on Wikipedia. This is often a good way to set off on an internet quest. In this case, it included a plot outline and a cast of characters, which would be very useful for deciding what images I'd like to find.
The second result of my search was the wonderful The Internet Movie Database - an excellent starting point whenever you want to find out about films. Scrolling down the webpage, I was able to read about the film and, very excitingly, discover a link to one of the most entrancing and imaginative websites I've yet to find - Coraline - the official website.
Once you enter the site, the best way to navigate it is to click on MAP and then explore. Wherever you see a link, you will find information about the making of the film, or get the opportunity to be creative. For example, if you click on Coraline's bedside table in her Bedroom, you will see a video about the creation of the costumes for the characters. Go into The garden and you can create your own flower. And so on.....
There is really too much to tell you about here, but you can learn more about the author (Neil Gaimon), the actors, the director (Henry Selick).....it is a really fascinating site. Is it obvious that I really got hooked on this particular quest?
Finally, to find the images I wanted for my presentation, I went back to searching the internet. This time, I set my google search to Images instead of Web, from where I was able to create an album of internet images in Pictures.
As you can imagine, making a PowerPoint presentation has never been so much fun!
Not to gloat, but we are taking a break next week and heading to Spain.
We booked the entire trip online and saved ourselves a huge amount of money. It all started with Ryanair (not my favourite airline, I admit, but they are cheap and they fly from Edinburgh!). We checked all the destinations available at this time of the year and found that we could fly to Alicante direct.
Although the Costa Blanca has negative connotations for many, we decided to see what there was inland. One of our favourite travel websites is Responsible Travel. It proved to be a good starting point as they feature environmentally sound holiday options all over the world. In fact, the accommodation in the Alicante area turned out to be unsuitable, but it helped to define the area we wanted to go to....and we started Googling.
Our luck was in and we struck gold with La Murta....and now we are off to spend a week in the mountains some kilometres inland from the coast.
Not only did we find well-priced and unusual self-catering accommodation, but through La Murta's informative website were also able to hire a car very reasonably too.
