Tech Savvy Projects is now operating in its new format, with ‘Family History’ preceding ‘Other Projects’ on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays, and an ‘E-Shed’ group on the 4th Thursday for members who also go to the ‘Tech Savvy Talks’ café discussion group.   

The focus in the ‘Family History’ session is on using information technology and programs such as ancestry.com for family history projects.  At our last session, U3A member and experienced family historian, Heather Sloan, spoke about her family history journey.  Heather shared many ideas for using the computer for family history, and stressed the importance of always double checking evidence before adding to family trees.   

The projects in the ‘Other Projects’ group are quite diverse, including developing an animation; producing a ‘perpetual’ calendar with birthdays listed on it;  producing travel blogs, examples of  which are already being published to the web and checked out in class, and more.  

The ‘E-Shed’ group before Tech Savvy Talks each month is also likely to result in a diversity of projects.  At the first session Bill began to develop a slide show presentation which required organising a huge collection of photos while Neville began work on fine tuning his blog, which is now three year old. Les bought along his Arduino board and idea for a project, but he will need to tell us about this next time as he was kept quite busy as a mentor in the group.

Beverley Lee

PS - A FB post by group member Margaret Walshe....

Looking forward to 'show and tell' today, and to hearing about different projects.   I'm also going to show and tell the new things I'm trialling on my own project https://leedevittfh.weebly.com website.   

If you are new to website development and would like to start a blog based site, start with a simple, one column blog.  This page is a blog page, but it has a side column.  You don't need to have a side column to start with, but as you will see from the information on the side, they can be useful.

There's a link to a simple You Tube video on creating a blog on a page for U3A Benalla bloggers - you might like to check it out.   Here's the link... ​u3abenalla.weebly.com/bloggers

In Projects today we are going check out the resources on  this page... internet willing...then get on to problem solving with our projects.

Bev
​Wednesday 27 March

Today's session will start with Show and Tell, then Internet willing, we will check out the search features of Ancestry.com; then have a look at MyHeritage.com.                        

Other link if this doesn't open - Top Ancestry Search Tips and Tricks ​https://youtu.be/uZnshl_fxmIyoutu.be/uZnshl_fxmI 

Another one... 
Five Reasons You are Not Finding your Ancestors

Then we will have a look at another online program which has complementary features to Ancestry.com - MyHeritage.com  -   

• myheritage.com in 100 seconds
• Making the Most of My Heritage
• About My Heritage:

Some links which, internet permitting, we will check out...

Check up - Scam news; U3A Benalla website:  U3A Benalla Tech Savvy Projects Page.  U3A Benalla Facebook Page:  Member websites; Member Twitter accounts, other possibilities.  

Google Slides - an app which is always available if you don't have Microsoft Powerpoint.  Check out:  ​https://youtu.be/kYA6GLAzz9youtu.be/kYA6GLAzz9AA   This is good to watch after you have had a first session - the narrator moves quite quickly.   Similar principles apply to powerpoint.  

Using Movie Maker - this time as an animation tool (Frank's project involves animation)

Still thinking about a blog?  Working a single 'blog page' effectively to learn basic principles.  Example:  my 'armchaireconomics.weebly.com' Starter Page.  

Learning Skill - 'Categories' 

Despite difficulties with the internet, the 'other projects' group began to 'scope' the possible apps and skills needed for some of their projects, with lots of ideas being shared on lots of project directions.

Slide Shows for Special Occasions - Apps: Power Point, Movie Maker Skills: Photo Resizing 

Nearly every project is going to require preparing a folder with numbered photographs to be uploaded into the project - whether a calendar, photo book or slide show.  Web sites and blogs are best developed with a related folder system containing photo images used on different pages.

Bev showed us a file folder containing numbered in order photos for a memorial slide show developed for an Aunt's funeral, then screened two versions of the memorial 'movie', one produced with Power Point, the other with Movie Maker. Bev then demonstrated the files from the file folder to introduce working with both the  Power Point process  and   Movie Maker (Microsoft) program.  Lots of discussion followed the demonstration.  

​Resizing photos is an important skill when sending photos by email, putting them in newsletters and webpages, and more.  Bev demonstrated using Microsoft Office's Picture Manager to focus on core features of the process, then everyone went off to check out what was available on their device and problem solve about how to transfer what Bev had shown them in an app or program on their device.  .  

We all have different devices and different apps and are likely to continue to do so.  The most important thing is to get to know the apps you have on your devices well and become skilled at using them.  It's also important to think outside the square for possible programs - with 

Alternatives to Microsoft Office

From John Barry: 

​"The free programs to which I referred today are LibreOffice at libreoffice.org and XnViewMP or XnView at xnview.com.

I have used them both for years. They work really well. LibreOffice consists of all the equivalents to Microsoft Office without the $150 annual charge. Even Word and Excel macros work in LibreOffice and all files created in Word etc translate readily to and from LibreOffice. Even if I were given a copy of Microsoft Office, I would not bother installing it.

Both programs are able to be installed in Windows, Linux, IOS & Android".

From Wendy Sturgess: 

'The free program that is equivalent to Microsoft Office that can be used with Windows 10 is called Apache Open Office – 4.  https://www.openoffice.org.  I just googled it.'

Our Tech Savvy Projects have now been clustered into three sub groups, ‘Family History’, ‘Other Projects’ and ‘E-Shed’. With diverse devices, systems, applications, learning needs and project ideas, members within the groups are making valued input to class discussion and informally clustering, encouraging and assisting one another.

Our aim is to come to each new session having achieved something on our projects since the last session, however small.

Lots of challenges are being faced, not least the difficulties with the WiFi internet in the U3A meeting room. A family history group member was to start a recent session trialling a new ancestry.com account with us all watching via the overhead projected screen when the internet froze. It was unavailable for the remainder of the class. Members, ever patient and enterprising, set to using their phones and other methods to do as much as they could. Is it impact of the NBN works nearby? Are we in a black spot? Is it a combination? Divided into subgroups, we do not have more than 10 in each subgroup and the modem is supposed to cater for 20.

​Don’t be surprised if you find us sitting as a group on the other side of town trialling the use of the U3A modem at the Royal Hotel or Golf Club next month!

Meeting times – 2nd and 4th Tuesdays: Family History 1.30 to 3 pm/Other Projects 3 to 4.30 pm; 4th Thursday 1 pm to 2.30 pm ‘E-Shed’.
Bev Lee