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.

ANOTHER MYDP COURSE BY TRAINER JON

Trainer Jon Bayley's started his Managing Your Digital Photos course seven years ago and it's popularity with members still exists. This week was Week 1 of yet another MYDP course for another lot of students, keen to learn skills to help them to download pics from a camera, correct and enhance them, and to store them safely.

Students first day is learning a basic understanding of some relevant technical stuff - like setting their camera's time and date, aspect ratio, zoom range and other camera settings.

Next, Jon showed the students a short video of  Peter Blasina  - The Gadget Man explaining how pixel count is not the only factor in determining image quality, its also image sensor size and lens quality that pay a big part.

Next weeks class will be spent learning to use Picasa 3.1, a free program from Google that is simple to use to crop and brighten photos, get rid of red-eye with one click, and has many other features.

                                                                                                                                                                 

WORKING BEE AT COMPUTER PALS

Every school holidays, our club volunteers are busy, busy in the clubroom and training room, - punching and collating course notes, printing and folding course timetables and Club brochures and distributing, tidying, cleaning, preparing course attendance sheets, etc, under the supervision of our hardworking Training Co-ordinator Michael.

It's a lot of work, particularly printing and putting together course notes for the next term.

It's also the time for Jon and Deborah to carry out regular maintenance on our training computers.

This week they both have been busy initializing Picasa in Windows 8, installing sample pics and stopping auto updates, as well as standardizing Windows 8 start screens and desktops across all training computers.

We have recently purchased Office 2013 and Jon put Word, Excel and PowerPoint shortcuts on all Windows 8 desktops and start screens.

And finally, Jon removed the old wireless modem, so we dont see the old internet service any more.

                                                 Lots of work for them both,.........................................

...........so after all the above work was finally completed on so many training computers it was.....................

......NO WONDER DEBORAH GOT EXCITED!

Great work you volunteers, your fellow club members really appreciated your work and dedication.

Thanks Judy for the great pics.

ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER MEETING

Yesterday was our regular monthly Management Committee meeting, all present except John Moxon who found it hard to attend from his and Margaret's present time in Skagway.

Your Committee spent two hours discussing a full Agenda before finishing up with afternoon tea.

Our hardworking Secretary Silvia, hiding behind all her files, was kept busy recording the minutes of the meeting.




A suggestion from a member about the number of passwords we need these days, asked  "Is there a better way", has prompted action to request the August member meeting guest speaker Leonie Smith, the CyberSafety Lady,  to give us some advice on Managing Passwords during her talk.

SCHOOL HOLIDAYS-But no rest for us at Parramatta Compals

MONDAY June 30
Today was Strategic Planning Day meeting. headed by our very busy and capable
 President Deborah....

.....and a small group of committee members, trainers, assistant trainers and an office assistant.who spent some hours discussing strategies for achieving our objectives, and reviewing progress so far.

I utilised some of the time after the meeting to finalise the club's cash receipt books and to bank the last of our monies for the financial year end 2014.

TUESDAY July 1

I spent the morning entering final data our club's financial income and expenditure for the end of the financial year, and then reconciled the bank and register figures, first time again for about the 20th time in a row. Now to find time to prepare the club's financial year ended 30 June 2014 accounts and to prepare annual financials and have them audited.

WEDNESDAY July 2

Another compals meeting, this time for a Course Review Day, with Trainers and Asst Trainers all participating in discussions to review the name of all the courses that the club conducts, and deciding which courses we should be offering, and how to structure the Beginners/Beyond the Basics courses in 

particular.

 Deborah, as usual, had control of the meeting and kept the group working on outcomes that would benefit our members and trainers.
Course descriptions will be compiled into a Course Handbook, with one A4 page per course. It will be kept at Reception and will be available to enquirers, and also be used to update descriptions on the website.
It was agreed that we try to cover too much in many of our courses, and there should be less content and more time for learners to practise. So we will split existing courses into Beginners and Beyond the Basics.

Thursday July 3
I started working on the financial papers, getting them ready for the auditor, and eventually for inclusion into the club's Annual Report and AGM. Spent heaps of time researching expenditure on Grants.

Friday July 3
A club social event for members, better than working on financial balancings and reports!
Kathryn Akhurst had  organised another Club social lunch for today, from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm at the Sicilian Restaurant, 292 Church Street, Parramatta.  We had good reports from people who went to lunch there last time.  The Lunch Special included many choices for $14.90 and also included a free glass of red/white wine or soft drink.

Nineteen members turned up to enjoy word fired pizza, and to socialise with fellow club members

Boy, am I glad this week of Compals is over!

JUNE 2014 MEMBER MEETING

Our club president Deborah was very happy at our regular monthly meeting today - and she made our members happy also when she announced a new course - "Keeping your computer happy"

Deborah was again happy when she presented 

 the Mug of the Month to Julie Nixon,
who was an Assistant Trainer and has
recently moved up to Trainer.

Guest Speaker Mark Young from ASCCA  ( Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association ) gave an excellent presentation about Microsoft's free online services, People, Calendar, One Drive, Word, Live Mail and Skype, that are automatically synchronised between your computer, phone and tablet. Deborah happily presented Mark with our club mug.

John Hain had computer problems when presenting
his Video of the Month......

....but he tried and tried to get it working......

....and was eventually succesful in playing his
very funny Video of the Month, and then had his 
audience in stitches!!

Towards the end of the meeting I caught up with members, including Audrey Biddle. We started work together 65 years ago in 1949 at the Department of Road Transport and Tramways, Macquarie Street, Sydney, and in 1960 lost track of each other for about 45 years before meeting up again in the Parramatta area a few years ago. Audrey and her husband Colin were getting into computers at the time, so they joined our club and regularly attend our monthly meetings and various courses.

Trainers and Assistant Trainers met recently to prepare Term 3 Courses that commence on 14th July. A copy of the course listings and dates was included in the June Newsletter and is also available at the Office. However, bookings will not be taken until after June 25th, to give Trainers time to contact all those on the Waiting Lists.