How we can help with the Internet
Our Email and Internet courses are very flexible, and can be taught
on a one-to-one basis on demand.
We run them all year round.
Please telephone 01603 611550 for an appointment for any of these:
Email Tuition (using Hotmail)
Once you've got your Email address and password, you can use Hotmail anywhere, by visiting
the website www.hotmail.com
We can sign you up to this popular Email service, and give you tuition
on all aspects of its use, from sending and receiving attachments to blocking
junk mail. One 2-hour session is usually enough.
Internet Starter Course
How the Internet can help with Job Seeking
This is a short, informal course for absolute beginners. We cover the really basic things:
finding your way around a web site, and using a search engine.
We visit some interesting web sites,
and finish with a set of challenging problems
for you to solve on the Internet, using your new skills.
See the "Links for Jobhunters" page of this web site
for an idea of the range of topics we'll cover.
An Internet Adventure
Follow this adventure through to its completion, and you will have learned Internet research skills to a standard which will help enormously in job hunting.
TRUE or FALSE?
N
The "Neanderthal" prehistoric man is named after a gentle schoolmaster called Joachim Neander.
N
Supposedly extinct ice-age animals can still be seen roaming in the valley where Neanderthal
remains were first found.
N
There is a railway station called "Neanderthal".
How can we check this out on the Internet?
Let's start by using the Google search engine, and run a search on the key word "Neanderthal".
We recommend that you have two Internet windows open at the same time, one for the search and one for this commentary. Then you can switch back and forth without losing your place in either. You can open a new Internet window at any time, by holding down the Shift key on the keyboard while clicking on a link.
So: load the Google search engine, by clicking on the link (with the Shift key if required): www.google.co.uk Now enter the single word "Neanderthal", without quotes, into the search box on the Google home page. Notice that because we're using the UK version of Google, we are given a choice between searching the whole web, or just pages from the UK. In this case, we'll search the whole web. Now click the "Google Search" command button.
What has the search engine found?
Things change fast on the Internet, and we can't guarantee that Google will always find the same
things that we did when we tried it. But probably at the top of the results list, and certainly
somewhere near the top, you will find an entry which begins: "Wilkommen bei Neanderthal.de".
This is a German web site (".de"), which is fair enough because the Neanderthal remains
were discovered in Germany. Don't worry, there is a translation!
You'll notice, on the Google results list, next to the title, it says "[Translate this page]". This is the one NOT to use! This link leads to a service in which the page is translated automatically by a computer. Computers are not very good at translation, and the result is often hilarious.
So: in Google, click on the title, "Wilkommen bei Neanderthal.de", and we'll enter the web site.
[ In case of difficulty, here's a direct link:
www.neanderthal.de ] OK so far?
You should have this commentary in one Internet window, and the German Neanderthal site in the other.
You'll notice a German flag and a Union Jack side by side. We click on the Union Jack (because we're Brits). That gives us a decent English translation.
The "Neanderthal" website's home page
Notice the navigation bar (set of principal links for pages within the web site) on the left.
Look at the third item down ("Neandertal"). In any kind of research, we keep coming across
little details which don't quite add up, and these are often clues to something interesting.
Why is it sometimes "Neanderthal" and sometimes "Neandertal"?
The word "Tal" is German for "valley", but it used to be spelled "Thal". Neanderthal man was discovered in 1856, and became known the world over under that name. Then in 1904 the Germans changed the spelling of "valley" from "Thal" to "Tal". So today we can say "Neanderthal man was discovered in a valley called Neandertal".
Entering Neanderthal Man's valley
Click on the link "Neandertal", and we'll enter the valley.
And here we meet the gentle schoolmaster Joachim Neander,
who would have been astonished to find
that his name had become a byword for a certain kind of brutish prehistoric man.
Apparently the valley was once narrow with high limestone cliffs, like our own Cheddar Gorge but with a river running through it. Joachim used to come there to walk and to write hymns. Long after his death someone decided to name the valley after him.
Then somebody else decided to turn the valley into a quarry, making chalk for building. Over the next hundred years they turned the once picturesque valley into a moonscape. While they were doing that, they discovered the bones of Neanderthal Man. They named the Prehistoric Man after the Valley, which they'd already named after the Poet ...
Poor Joachim must have turned in his grave!
What about the Ice Age animals?
If we scroll down the same page, we'll come to the animals. In the 20th century, the locals
turned part of the moonscape into a nature reserve, and stocked it with aurochs, bison, and tarpans.
Bisons we know about, but what on earth are aurochs and tarpans? Back to Google for more searches!
Don't miss the next exciting episode ...
In the next episode, we'll search for aurochs and tarpans,
and we'll find out how extinct animals can be brought back to life (honestly!).
In a later episode, we'll track down the railway station.
An Internet Adventure
Aurochs, Tarpans and ... how to reverse history!
The story so far ...
At the end of the last episode, we had entered Neanderthal Man's valley, only to find
aurochs and tarpans running free. These are ice-age animals which are supposed to be extinct.
What are they exactly, and what are they doing in the 21st century?
Let's find out about Tarpans first
The first thing to do is to reload the Google search engine.
Once again, we recommend that you have two Internet windows open at the same time, one for the search and one for this commentary. If you already have a second Internet window open, you may find that the quickest thing to do is to close the second window, and re-open it by holding down the Shift key on the keyboard while clicking on this link: www.google.co.uk
Now we enter the single word "Tarpan", without quotes, into the search box on the Google home page. Once again, we'll search the whole web rather than just web sites from the UK. Now click the "Google Search" command button.
What has the search engine found this time?
When we tried this, the top item of Google's results list was a web site from Belgium (".be").
We're getting around a bit! The entry describing this web site begins with the one word:
"TARPAN". Sounds reasonable! Let's enter the site by clicking on the title, "TARPAN".
[ In case of difficulty, here's a direct link: www.tarpan.be ].
You'll be relieved to spot another Union Jack. Once again we've got a translation.
The Belgian "Tarpan" web site
But what's this? We've got a web page about a long distance footpath!
This raises an important point about using search engines. A search engine looks for web pages which contain a certain word. It can't guarantee that the word is used in the right context. The search engine gets us close to our target by coming up with a list of suggested web pages, but we still have a process of trial and error to go through before we find a web site which meets our exact requirements.
Second attempt to find the Tarpan
Use the back button to get back to Google's results list from our last search, and we'll try
the next item listed.
When we tried this, the second item on Google's results list had the title "Breeds of livestock - Tarpan horse". [ Direct link: www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/horses/TARPAN/ ]. Notice that Google doesn't just point us to whole web sites, it can get right inside a web site and direct us to an individual page.
Click on the heading of the relevant item in Google's results list, and let's see what we've got this time. Fingers crossed!
Information "from the horse's mouth"!
BINGO! This is bang on target. It's a page of information from an organisation which
breeds tarpans. If they can't give us useful information about these animals,
then nobody can.
Notice the main points made here about the Tarpan. It's a prehistoric wild horse, the ancestor of our modern domesticated horse. As we scroll down the page, we'll find several pictures of tarpans, and about a third of the way down we come to an explanation of how the species became extinct, but was then "bred back" by crossing selected present day horses.
I like the bit about the animals' temperament: it's ok to ride them, but they don't like to be told where to go!
OK, that's the Tarpan. What about the Aurochs?
We start over again from Google, just as in previous searches. But this time, I'd like to
introduce a variation.
There's one particular web site that I'd like to show you. If we run a search on the single word "Aurochs", we'll get a fine list of web pages which mention Aurochs, but the one I'm looking for isn't anywhere near the top.
So what am I going to do about it?
In a situation like this, we use more than one word in Google's search box.
What can I remember about the web site I want to find? It was about a farm in France which breeds aurochs. We could in theory run a search using the entire phrase, "a farm which breeds aurochs" but search engines don't usually work like that. We usually pick out "key words", and use just those.
Let's try a Google search using just the two key words, "Aurochs farm". Enter those two words, without quotes, separated by a space, into the search box, and click the "Google Search" button.
We come face to face with an Aurochs ...
Right at the top of Google's new results list are desciptions of two pages from the web site
we want to visit. Click on the heading of either of the items listed to enter the site.
[ Direct link, if you need it: www.ferme-auroch.com From the first page to appear, click the Union Jack.]
There's a navigation bar on the left of the "Aurochs farm" web site. Click on "Livestock rearing / The animals". On the next page, the animals' heads are themselves links, as we can prove by moving the mouse cursor over them. When the arrow symbol changes into a pointing finger, we know that we've found a link to another page. Click on the picture of a "Reconstituted Aurochs" (sic).
... and then bump into a whole herd of them ...
On this page we find just what we need - an explanation of the Aurochs, in simple language,
from an organisation which knows what it's talking about.
Just as the Tarpan was the ancestor of the modern horse, so the Aurochs was the ancestor of modern cattle. And the Aurochs, like the Tarpan, became extinct, but was "bred back" by deliberate human intervention. This web site uses the term, "reverse selection", to describe this process.
Farmers are a hard-nosed lot. If you take another link from the navigation bar at the left, "Farm products", you'll understand the fate of some of the animals bred here. The farm sells to its visitors such delicacies (?) as "jellied aurochs" and "smoked bison".
Don't miss the next exciting episode ...
In the next episode, we'll try to track down the railway station.
But is it called "Neanderthal station" (named after the prehistoric man), or "Neandertal station"
(named after the modern word for the valley)?
[ 28 March 2003 ]
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