29 October 2014

MICHAEL'S WINDOWS 7 BEGINNERS COURSE

This Windows 7 Beginners Course will introduce students to computing – how the hardware, software and operating system interact; how to use the mouse and keyboard; files and folder management; and how to open and close a software application and more. The Course is conducted by Trainer Michael and Assistant Trainer Silvia.
The course is suitable for students intending to purchase a laptop or PC with Windows 7, and without any experience with an earlier Windows based computer.

Student Doreen says Trainer Michael's course is "wonderful, wonderful"

 Our Club Secretary and Assistant Trainer Silvia assists Michael on the Course......
.....and is helping Student Helen learn all about Windows 7

Great work Michael and Silvia!
             

26 October 2014

MAKING PHOTOBOOKS WITH SNAPFISH.COM.AU

Trainer Dawne's Photobook course using snapfish.com.au reached Day 3 today. All five students are getting into the swing of uploading photos to Snapfish, choosing a book type and theme, and then compiling their individual photobook


Thu scanned her Vietnamese families' historical photos and uploaded them. Thu then chose to have Snapfish autofill her photobook. In a flash her book with 150 photos was compiled, a wonderful book of her grandparents and parents and other members of her family.



When Thu saw her almost completed photobook, she clapped her hands and had a happy smile.

Trainer Dawne then helped Thu edit and improve each page.  Thu will now enter names into the provided text boxes to identify individuals.





Sue is also happy with how the photobook of her holidays is proceeding.








Lloyd is being ably assisted by Assistant Trainer Margaret to put his photobook of his father together.



Next week is the final day of the course, and is the day that students completed photobooks will be uploaded to Snapfish for printing.

21 October 2014

ANDROID TABLETS FOR BEGINNERS COURSE

For the second morning in a row this week, Michael, Dawne and myself are at a course together, this time Dawne and I are with Trainer Michael who is conducting the Android Tablets Beginners course with a full training room of six students and 3 trainers.




Trainer Michael is teaching his students how to synch their various email accounts together.

All of them, including Asst Trainer Dawne, have their heads down following Michael's instructions.












Glenda is happy with Dawne who has helped
 her synch her two email accounts together.

20 October 2014

PHOTOBOOK COURSE's 2ND WEEK





Today was the second session of the Photobook Course conducted by popular Trainer Dawne with the assistance of Assistant Trainers Margaret and myself.



Cheryl and Sue are well into the design of their http://www.snapfish.com.au/photobooks and are confidently adding and re-sizing photos, backgrounds and text to pages. Sue is excited that she is learning so much at this course.

We trainers, Dawne, Margaret and myself are also learning heaps about conducting a "hands on" photobook course, based on Snapfish, an excellent and simple photobook up in the online application. As it is a "cloud" app, students can work on their photobook at home, and/or at our training room during the course.

Its just as well there are three of us, it enables us to share the load of helping individual students, at different levels of computer competency.

09 October 2014

FILM MAKING SIG - October 2014

The  Film Making Group meets 10.30am on the 2nd Friday each month, and it's free to all financial members. As it is held in the Training Room, it helps that members attending let President Deborah know in advance when they are attending, an email or just a quick phone call to the office 9806 5030, so that a larger room can be booked, if necessary.

Today's SIG was attended by nine members. Following a request from new member Eric, Trainer George demonstrated Windows Movie Maker.

With Movie Maker you have a video editor, with which you are able to cut and edit photos, videos and movies without being an expert in these techniques. An assistant will guide you through the different parts of editing. Windows Movie Maker 2014 works with Windows 8 and 7, Vista and XP. And it is free! 
If you would like to learn how to use Windows Movie Maker, put your name down on the Club's Course Waiting List at the Office.


Judy has been working on her video "Burramatta to Parramatta" and  we viewed some of her editing efforts today

07 October 2014

JON BAYLEY - 7 YEARS OF TEACHING MYDP


The MYDP (Managing Your Digital Photos) course was started back in 2007 by trainer John Moxon. In 2008 John was to be away on holidays and asked Margaret's schoolfriend's husband Jon to stand in for him as a trainer teaching MYDP, 

 Since then, Jon has conducted many MYDP courses over seven years, and has turned out to  be a very popular and knowledgeable trainer, and a real asset for our Club.
Jon always attracts a full training room of students, eager to learn about their camera workings and how to manage their photos on their computer, mainly by using Google's Picasa.

 Its now Term 4 and the final term for 2014. It's Jons fifth course for 2014, and it's another full training room with Jon, six students and two buddies, Dawne and myself.

Thanks Jon for your dedication and expertise in training our members, you are really appreciated, especially by your students. One,  today at morning tea, said she had already  learnt lots about her camera.

24 September 2014

AN EMAIL FROM BANGLADESH

John Hain, our happy Trainer, Welcomer and funny movie player is in Bangladesh as a volunteer.


Here is John's first email about his adventure in reaching the Bangladesh school...............

Hi,
Here is the tale of our adventures in getting to our destination.
In short, we have arrived safely at our final destination, a school, received a wonderful welcome and we are embarrassed about the standard of our accommodation and care. I feel very privileged to be here. Here are the details.
  1. Dhaka.
In Dhaka we stayed at the Viator Guest House, which is run for Christians by people from Norway. We were very comfortable there, though it is a lot more spartan than our hotel in Bangkok.
We were picked up in vans and taken to the station – quite an unimpressive place, to catch our train. This station is the terminal for our train, reputably the best train in Bangladesh (it was built here for the Indian Government, but when they couldn't pay, so the Bangladesh Government pressed it into service for themselves.) Unfortunately it hadn't returned from its all night journey from Patibatpur and beyond yet. It was running 90 minutes late. When it arrived it had to be cleaned, refuelled, etc so we got away about two hours late.

However, waiting for the train was not a dull experience.
  • To see the morning peak hour trains arriving and then continuing into the city was entertaining. All had people sitting or sleeping or even preparing large pots of food on the carriage roofs. I have some amazing video!
  • People at he station just wanted to come up to us , and when they built up the courage they would talk to us in English. They would bring heir children to have them photographed and ask no more than to see their photo on the screen.
  • The policeman assigned to the station, singled me out for a conversation, after he had ordered the beggars to go away. He told me that he had been part of the UN peace keeping force in the Congo(?) with Australian , British and Canadian police.
  • When he moved on a gentleman with orange died hair cautiously came up and began a conversation in near perfect English. He was an electrical engineer in charge of the signalling on the railways. He was very worried about his daughter in Year 11 who was spending too much time watching TV and not enough time studying. He showed me the thick text book he had just bought for her. Then he invited me down to see the signalling operations at the station. I let the others know where I was going and nervously followed him down the platform to a room where two men ere working on commuters and wind up telephones controlling the local signalling. I took some photos. My friend then brought in and introduced me to the station master. I am told that I brought great honour to these people by visiting them. I also have a standing invitation to visit the signalling engineer, whenever I am at the station.
  • A policeman armed with a very long rifle came walking down the line and a group of goats came, cleaned up some rubbish in the line before jumping up onto the platform to search for more delicacies.
  • There was a nice quite man on the platform who eventually plucked up the courage to ask me for some money. I didn't have anything suitable to give him, unfortunately. A little while later I heard him wailing very loudly as a different police officer was going through his things. A crowd of locals gathered around him. It was a confronting sight, but I could not understand what was going on because don't understand the language. It seemed that he was desperate that the police officer did not take anything from him, because he needed what he had to survive.
As you can see, waiting for the train was not boring.
  1. The train journey.
Travelling First Class on the train was a wonderful experience. The air conditioning was great, supplemented by passenger controlled fans mounted on the walls. We enjoyed the wonderful service of the steward, dressed in his white uniform, delivering cups of a dark sweet tea. Delicious! The train runs on broad gauge (5 foot 3 inches between the rails) so it was very comfortable. The price of $10 Australian suited the pocket too. Australian money goes a long way here with $A1 = 72 Tacca.
We had to travel slowly at first because so many people are walking or resting on the railway lines. I even saw a mother doing her daughters hair in the middle of the tracks.
The scenery was fantastic. We saw huge areas of flooded land, sometimes as far as the eye could see. The train at times was on a narrow embankment just above he flood waters, just like the approach to Gosford, on the train, only Brisbane waters there is only a puddle compared to what we saw at times. All that flooded land was growing rice.
We crossed the Brahmaputra River (yes it has another name in Bangladesh) very slowly on a four and a half kilometre road/railway bridge.The train did no more than 10kmh as the bridge has several large cracks in it, so one has to proceed carefully. The river was a raging torrent below. If the bridge gave way, we would have been history. (PS We are flying home, so this is our only trip across the bridge.)
On the other side there were lots of rice fields interspersed with Sugar cane and bananas.
Then there was a bit of excitement. The train line runs along the Indian / Bangladesh border for a way. I don't know why, but our train stopped for a while there, even though it was not at a station. Armed Bangladesh border police were lined up along the track to guard our train. There were a large crowd of Indian villagers waiting and watching our train. We noticed a young Indian woman standing there in her yellow Sari, that was obviously covering a large amount of gear. Those in the know on the train told us that she was a smuggler. When our train began to move the woman made her dash and got onto the train. Another woman tried but failed. Shortly three border police officers with very large rifles came through trhe train looking for her. We did not see what happened.
It was not long after that, that night fell. We arrived at Parbatipur at about ten past seven, to a tremendous welcome.
  1. Parbatipur.
Where we had to get off the platform was barely two metres wide. The platform was packed with people. (Unbeknown by me at this stage, they were there to welcome us.) They took our luggage and I helped them stack it on the platform, trying to keep enough room for other passengers to get through. It was dark so it was hard to see where our bags went. However, they started to disappear as the welcome party put our 20kg bags on their heads and walked off with them, up the unlit railway steps to the over-bridge. They loaded them into a van. We were each presented with possies of flowers.
Then we were loaded onto the school's Vangaries. (I have no idea how to spell it, but basically it is a push bike with a large wooded platform at the back , big enough to hold four people.) You sit on the platform and dangle your legs over the side. These guys rode us the 4 km or so down narrow congested roads, avoiding pedestrians, motor bikes, buses and trucks that just blast their horns and weave through. We just get to ring our bell to tell pedestrians to get out of the way. Our journey was filmed by a teacher from the school fom a moror bike driven by another staff member. Fortunately we all made it to our accommodation safely and without incident. It was a really great experience.
Our accommodation is lovely. We are living on the first floor of the head master's house. I have a lovely room which is fan cooled and has an ensuite and a balcony that overlooks the main road and then extends to a view of rice fields. We have a dining room and kitchen on our level, where the housemaid cooks our meals and washes our clothes. A security guard sits at the front gate all night. In fact, our accommodation is noticeably better than the head masters on the lower level, which is a sign of just how much they value us coming here … but it is a bit embarrassing. Because this is Bangladesh, there is no hot water,(as in over 80% of the world) but the “cold” water is of a very acceptable temperature. I am sleeping here very well, despite the heat. In fact,I am sleeping here better than I do at home.

School (Monday).
A bus picked us up to take us to the school for a stunning and tear jerking reception. We were met at the gates (walking in) by students who showered us with flowers, singing a welcome song and presenting us with cards they had made to welcome us. We then had to walk between rows of students who gave us more and more flowers and cards. When we finally made it to the end, we were seated and had a student behind each of us bearing large branches of leaves, to shelter us from the sun. There staff washed our feet, gave us a necklace of flowers (which indicates that we were important guests) fed us some lovely sweet food, before we went to a welcome assembly on the school verandah. Students from each year (Kindergarten to Year 6) either sang or danced for us. Lets just say that I took a lot of video footage today. It was very humbling that they are so desperate to have our help.
As we rode back to our accommodation, on the school vangaries, I noticed a t\small truck coming the other way. Dad was in the cabin driving, while he had 3 cows, his wife and their child in the tray! It is a different world.
In conclusion, this land is a geographer's paradise and I am so glad to be here. Wait until you see the pictures!

John.


         This happy mob of our members can hardly wait to see John's pictures and videos of Bangladesh!



21 September 2014

SEPTEMBER 2014 MEMBERS' MEETING

Another happy crowd of 60 plus member attended our regular monthly meeting.



John Moxon launched a video he created about St Johns Church, titled "Sounds of St Johns Parramatta"



Last year our Club received fiunding from ClubGRANTS for a number of our trainers to learn about video making by attending a course at ICE (Information Cultural Exchange) Parramatta, a Western Sydney community arts organization. The course was conducted by Ludwig, pictured left, who attended John's launch and was very impressed by John's film making effort.



Our club members were also very interested
 in John's video presentation!



Long-time club member Bill New enjoyed a coffee with Trainer Peter.
IT Specialist Lawrence Lam of Lawrence Computer Services was introduced to the meeting, and  is available to assist club members with their at home computer problems. 
He can be contacted by phoning 8812 2266 or 0418 602 338.

17 September 2014

PICASA REFRESHED BY JON

Jon's one-day, two hour  Managing your Digital Photos - Refresher course attracted a roll up of six students today. All had  attended one of Jon's 5 week MYDP courses previously.
Jon re-visited Picasa, and following a request, delved into managing "people" albums. He explained that Picasa uses facial recognition technology to find and group similar faces together across entire collections of photos, and by adding name tages to these groups of faces, new people albums are created.
Another question on back-up pictures was asked, and Jon explained how to use cloud applications such as One Drive to automatically back-up pictures. He also demonstrated how to easily copy and paste all pics on your camera card directly onto a USB drive, and how to re-name the USB drive.




Student Beryl was so happy, she hugged our Secretary Silvia on the way out!

14 September 2014

BUSY MEETINGS FRIDAY AT COMPALS


The Friday morning meeting was the Film Making SIG, with John Moxon playing his almost completed film "Sounds of St Johns Parramatta' featuring St Johns bells, clock and organ.

John's film will shortly be available for viewing at a members' meeting.


John also played the 2008 photo story entitled "Glenda masters the pc".  It was made at John's Photo Story course in 2008 and starred Glenda, who was at the meeting this morning. Glenda masters the pc will also be played at a future members meeting, you are sure to enjoy it.


Deborah then led the SIG attendees through the tuition manual for Adobe Premiere Elements 11 application.



Deborah near the end of the SIG asks "any questions?"





Then it was off for a bit of lunch before coming back for the afternoons Trainers meeting to plan the Term 4 Timetable of courses and SIGs, monthly members and committee meetings.


Training Co-ordinator Michael had his hands full to ensure that the Timetable met all parameters, including fitting all the proposed courses into the term schedule.

Each Trainer will be contacting people on the Waiting List this week, and then bookings will be open for all members from Friday at the Members meeting.

Deborah has since emailed all members with the finalised Course Timetable for Term 4 attached.
 So check your email and have a look to see if you would like to do any of the Courses. If so, check for availability at this Fridays Member meeting.

Another full day at Parramatta Computer Pals...................

11 September 2014

eBAY SELLING IS RIFE AT COMPUTER PALS

Called into the office this afternoon to pick up the weeks banking documents, and was surprised to hear much talk from the training room. Poked my head in and found a room full of 6 students selling heaps of stuff on ebay, and having fun with trainers Deborah and Jan.

They were learning how to sell goods online at a One-Day course, mainly to help them downsize their furniture and sell other stuff.

For a one-day course the supplied notes totalled 27 pages, because there was a lot to cover in the course -- registering as an eBay seller and creating an accout; listing the item for sale;completing the sale; and learning how to set up a Pay Pal account.




Student Susan had to get trainer Deborah's
personal attention on "what price should I put
on my item?"



They weren't a bad mob though - they allowed me to join them in afternoon tea....with home-made cake!


So, if you would like to learn how to sell or buy stuff online, put your name on the waiting list for eBay Selling or Buying and join in the fun of Deborah and Jan one-day courses...you might even get some cake!







07 September 2014

Android Special Interest Group

The Android Special Interest Group met on Friday afternoon and explored how Google Now works.  Google Now is the Android equivalent of Apple's Siri, allowing us to give our Android smart phones (and some tablets) instructions by voice instead of typing.  (The answer to the question "what is the meaning of life, the universe and everything" is "42" - in case you were wondering.)

It was lovely to see Glenda again.  Glenda starred in a digital photo story promoting Parramatta Computer Pals a few years ago, and has now rejoined the Club with Bobby.

The Android Special Interest Group meets each month on the first Friday of the month, from 1:15 to 3:30 pm.  All Android-using members are welcome.

29 August 2014

SPECIAL WORKSHOP WITH DROPBOX AUSTRALIA VOLUNTEERS

Dropbox opened their new Sydney office in 2014.  The workers at Dropbox decided that they would like to donate their time to give back to the community, and Account Executive Emma King contacted Parramatta Computer Pals to ask how they could help our Club.  

As a result, on Friday Emma and her colleagues (Shing, Tony and Harry) came to Parramatta to run a workshop on uploading and sharing photos from smart phones and tablets using Dropbox and Facebook.  Seventeen members of Parramatta Computer Pals attended the workshop.  

 Emma took us step by step through how to set up a Dropbox account, download the Dropbox app on our devices and computer desktop, create a folder, upload some pictures to Dropbox, and then share them with friends.  At each step the Dropbox team moved around to help us individually (and it was quite a challenge, as we had many different devices, operating systems and levels of expertise).  


At the end of the workshop we thanked the Dropbox team and presented them with Club mugs in appreciation of their time and effort.

21 August 2014

OUR CLUB'S VOLUNTEERS - 2014

     (Collage created using Picasa, as taught in Managing your Digital Photo course by Jon Bayley)

These are our very valuable volunteers who regularly help out in our club office and keep Parramatta Computer Pals running efficiently.

  • Elizabeth Williams is the Office Assistant each Monday. She has also re-organised the office generally.
  • Anne Howison is the Office Assistant each Tuesday.
  • Aileen Williams is the Office Assistant each Wednesday. Aileen also balances and banks incoming monies each week.
  • Editha Haarman is the Office Assistant each Thursday.
Our Office Assistants attend to members' personal and phone enquiries, course bookings and payments, and general assistance to the club Secretary. They also assist with preparation of morning and afternoon teas for  training courses.
  • Silvia Vega is our Secretary and is often in the office carrying out her secretarial duties.
  • Margaret Tucker is our Webmaster and Newsletter Editor and is always busy researching our members activities and photos for iuclusion in her postings.
Our Club would not function without the help of our wonderful volunteers, so please give each a personal thank you when next you see them......


20 August 2014

NEW COURSE - KEEPING YOUR COMPUTER HAPPY

Our club has initiated a new two-week course for members that has attracted a full training room of six students, eager to learn all about regular maintenance on their home computers.

President and Trainer Deborah has compiled the course notes, with the help of notes by ASCCA trainer Mark Young and research on Windows Search website.

Some of the course topics are -
  • Security - protection from viruses and other threats
  • Clean Up - Disk clean up, error checking and software uninstalling/installing
  • Back Up
  • Disk Health - Defragmentation
  • Cleaning computer externally
The course aims to show students that a little time invested  on regular maintenance will keep  your computer happy.

I don't know about keeping their computers happy, but Lisle, Margaret, Jenny, Wendy and Helen were all smiling when they had a break for morning tea with Deborah........

If you are interested in doing the course next term, hurry to put your name on the waiting list of Keeping your Computer Happy, by phone, email or at the office.

16 August 2014

WINDOWS 7 - BEYOND BASICS COURSE




Assistant Trainer Silvia conducted the last of  the five weekly Windows 7 Beyond Basics course sessions in the absence of Trainer Michael last Thursday. Silvia was ably assisted by Office Assistant Editha on the day.


The W7 -  Beyond Basics course follows the Windows 7 Beginners course. It teaches students all about files and folders -  how to create folders and to be systematic in naming their folders - so they can easily locate documents, pictures, etc in the future, particularly when their computer holds many hundreds of items.




Silvia, besides being a regular Assistant Trainer, is our Club Secretary, and we all know how busy that position is........









13 August 2014

AN AFTERNOON AT COMPUTER PALS

I arrived at our office at lunchtime to assist Trainer Jon on the final day of his course, Managing Your Digital Photos. I walked in to find our Wednesday office assistant Aileen working on  listing members' payments for courses, annual subs, etc in preparation for her to bank the monies later in the afternoon..

Aileen has been assisting me every Wednesday for months, and it saves me heaps of time and effort. Aileen's work experience prior to retirement certainly helps her to carry out this listing, balancing and banking efficiently and carefully.

Thank you so much Aileen, you really are a help to me, you even helped out while your arm was in plaster....

Jon's students started to arrive for their final day of the Managing Your Digital Photos course and Jon was soon  showing them how to make various styles of picture collages by using Picasa,
      However, when Maria (above centre) asked Jon a question, he had to think about how to answer!
             Eric was working alone on the other side, and was well into making his picture collage.
Their course finished, Editha, Maria, Fran, Lloyd and Eric thanked Jon for his patience and expertise in teaching them how to manage their digital photos.

After the students left, Jon and I went out into the office, to find that Aileen was now helping Secretary Silvia with collating the August newsletter...........Aileen never stops helping!

                                            A great afternoon with wonderful members!