Download a copy of this Newsletter

From the chair - Ian Campbell
Courses have come to an end for 2009 but we will continue with the Tuesday afternoon "How do I..?" and Friday drop in sessions until 22nd December then start again on Friday 8th January 2010.

Over 2009 we have seen a decrease in people wanting to enrol in the more advanced courses but a steady demand for the basic introductory ones. One of the reasons for this may be that common programs are now easier to learn than they used to be but I suspect that a course lasting a month or so presents too much information for most of us to take in and that members are learning particular tasks as they need them in other ways.

This signals a trend away from program courses toward task oriented learning and Seniornet needs to follow this pattern. Task oriented learning is where we have a particular task to perform like sending photos to relatives and we do whatever is needed to achieve that rather than attending a course on Outlook Express which may contain that task somewhere along the line. .

We can learn specific tasks by reading about it in a book, looking at video on it, searching the subject on the internet or by asking someone who might know. Seniornet needs to cover all these avenues so next year look for further moves toward this type of learning. The most obvious and efficient way to achieve this the continuation of the "How do I..?" sessions but maybe with some fine tuning. This technique is not much use to people using computers for the first time so there will be a place for the introductory courses and, for the foreseeable future, people to tutor them. Tutoring is a rewarding experience but one that many people seem reluctant to take on. There are excellent resources to help with course content and to teach something is recognised as the best way of learning. We need new tutors and assistant tutors to help run the introductory sessions next year so when the call for volunteers is made please be prepared to help others, as you have been helped in the past. .

Anti virus systems:
The two most common free anti-virus programs in use are Avast and AVG. Both have done a reasonable job over the last few years but both have experienced problems recently. A new free program for protecting your computer has been released by Microsoft and is receiving good reviews by the normally sceptical participants at the PC World forum called "Press F1". It is available from http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/ and is about 8mb in size. Be aware though that it will download about 70mb of data files when it is installed so it may not be suitable for those on dial up connections. A word of warning: It is not a good idea to have two antivirus programmes on a computer so if you are thinking about using this new one from Microsoft you should uninstall the existing programme on your computer before doing so. .

The Federation Newsletter:
The NZ Federation of Seniornet Societies publishes a newsletter on the Internet that contains a number of items, not only about our core activities but also others of interest to seniors. This extract is from the latest newsletter." SeniorNet is partnering with the Retirement Commission to help our members get their personal finances sorted. Using learning resources and calculators on the Commission's excellent website - sorted.org.nz - we're hoping members will be able to learn a little about using calculators online and at the same time glean a few tips about managing your money!" You can read the full newsletter at http://www.seniornet.org.nz .

Passwords
It is hardly the time of the year to be discussing problems but as a result of a question at a recent Drop In session it may be OK to have a brief mention about passwords. The question was about the need to register and provide a password in order to access a particular website. We all know that it is accepted practice to keep your password secret so what is this about giving it out on the internet? The answer is that you do not divulge you own password but that you make up another that will be used for this site only. But when you have registered for a number of websites for your Internet connection, internet banking, different newsletters, TradeMe, a Gmail account and the like, each with their own password, you could finish up with a dozen passwords and how are you going to remember which one goes with which registration. One method is to use an easy to remember common password with a different combination of letters or symbols in it to identify a particular site. For example: Think of an easy phrase such as " our wedding anniversary is 29 March" and take the initial letter of each word to create "owai29m" as the common password, then insert the identifier for each site somewhere within this combination. So if your Internet Service provider is Xtra, your password could be "Owai;xt;29M" ( the xt indicating Xtra); the password for TradeMe could be "Owai;tm;29M" (the tm indicating TradeMe) and so on for each password. Just remember that a strong password should have at least 8 characters with a mix of capitals, lowercase, numbers and symbols. .

Insert a picture in a Word document
Members may recall that in the November newsletter we told of a training video Graham Adam had created to show how to attach a number of photos to an email message. This month he has been busy again and produced another video to show how to insert a picture into a document and have the text flow around the picture. This is a topic that has been discussed a number of times at our Tuesday and Friday afternoon help sessions as members create a family history and want to illustrate people or happenings. Graham has uploaded the video to the internet and you can access it by either clicking this video link or using the direct web address: http://www.screencast.com/users/gpadam .When you get to the web site you will need to select the Word icon, then click on the large white arrow to start the video. Note: This video has been created using the latest version of Microsoft Word 2007 and there is a slight difference in how to access Text Wrapping compared with earlier versions. In the older versions - just click on the photo and the Picture Toolbar will appear where you can find the text wrapping tool. It looks like this While you are at the website you may notice that there is also an icon called "Picture" and you can use this to review the video of how to attach photos to an email. For the benefit of members who would like to know how to insert a picture into a document but who do not use the internet, call in at the Learning Centre any Tuesday or Friday afternoon and someone will explain it all for you. .

And that wraps it up for this year other than to wish you all a very