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.

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......

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.

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........

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!

ANDROID PHONES & TABLETS SIG - 1August 2014

President and Trainer Deborah's regular Special Interest Group for members with Android smart phones and tablets was held on Friday in our club's Training Room,  

with seven members attending with their android phone and/or tablet

Blanche had a problem with her Samsung tablet, she could navigate to the club website   http://parramattacps.org.au/  easily, but could not view the club newsletter. As I was assisting Deborah I helped Blanche, and soon found that when I clicked on the newsletter link it did not work. I checked her tablets apps and found that Adobe Reader had not been installed. We then went to Play Store Apps and downloaded the free Adobe Reader app, and installed it.

Blanche then navigated back to our website, clicked on the current club Newsletter.....and

was pleasantly happy to be able to read the Newsletter.

We were not so lucky in solving another problem for her, she wanted to set tabs for a couple of websites that she regularly visited, but after numerous tries we gave up. Deborah and I will try to resolve Blanche's tab problem by the next SIG.

Alan, Patricia, Yvette, Barbara, Helen,  and Margaret and Michael brought up various problems with their tablets, and most were solved by Deborah using Google.

                 Afternoon tea was a welcome break and a chance for members to chat.

Deborah and I will check out how to set up tabs on android tablets by the next SIG meeting on Friday 5th September 1.30pm to 3.30pm.

 SIG's are FREE to financial members so come along and learn how to use tabs to easily view your favourite websites whenever you open your web browser on your tablet.