The Exchange Community Centre computer classes

Computing comprehension for the young & old

2011-08-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

Todays class was busy, the computers were stretched to their capacity while the class participants eagerly worked, learned and got braver and bolder with trying new things.

We had a productive day going over a number of topics:

Under the careful guidance of Michael, Carl was kept busy tidying up RSS vibes feeds for weather and news along with modifying the page layout

Phillipa, Fifi and Theoreila agonised over getting a childrens Wild Thornberry game to work on several computers.

Mary enthusiastically delved into the world of internet browsers and antivirus.

Maureen had complications accessing her Gmail account so we underwent the painstaking process of gaining access. Funny how it comforts us to know that its difficult for others to access our account, but incredibly frustrating when security is so tight that we can't access it ourselves!

Mal breezed in to touch base with the footy updates, email and online deals!

Thanks for coming everyone!
Bronwyn & Micheal

Its been a busy two weeks....and HOT TIP 'Google Docs'

2011-07-28T16:51:00.000-07:00

The past 2 weeks have been unbelievably busy. The residents of Kelvin Grove and surrounding neighborhoods have been attending the computer class in droves. Michael has been effortlessly answering technical questions and imparting his 'high tech' knowledge to all the class participants.

We were graced with the enthusiastic Annette who was busy helping students, multi-tasking with Facebook and paying a few bill via online banking, Carl back in action with Net Vibes along with continuing lessons with Learning onLine, Andrew who was delighted once learning how to search videos on uTube and increasing his knowledge with Wikipedia, Bruce who was determined to get a digital image onto a music album he had created himself, and a few other drop ins with a question or two.

Well done class!!!

Hot tip for today: Google Docs is a great resource for creating spreadsheets, documents and presentations online, and the even better news is you can store these files online too, saving you from needing to have a USB stick. All you need is a Gmail account. For more information refer to: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour1.html

Another Week at the Exchange

2011-05-25T18:28:00.000-07:00

6 People in today, helped out with Burning CD's, watching youtube videos and simple downloading and mouse skills. Mick and Bronny in today

Adult Community Computer Classes are a hit!

2010-09-16T12:12:00.000-07:00

The computer classes are proving to be a valuable outlet for a number of Kelvin Grove residents. We are delighted to see our residents expanding their computing skills from week to week. Just recently we distributed a easy-to-use computing manual for residents to refer to for some of the common queries computer users often have. The topics covered range from :

What is Twitter?
Why would I use Facebook?
How do I set up a Gmail account?
How can I scan my computer for viruses?
What is an internet browser and what are the different types?

Class participants find these manuals to be a great resource, they can work through the book in any manner which suits them along with scribbling notes in their own language, meaning when they refer back to their notes later on they will have more chance of remembering.

The classes attract those aged from 3 years old (obviously not adults, but they come along and play while their parent/s learn) to just this week we had a gentleman in his late 80’s wanting to watch dancing videos on YouTube.

If you are interested in attending the weekly computer class at The Exchange in Kelvin Grove, please phone our helpful team on 07 3175 9975 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 07 3175 9975 end_of_the_skype_highlighting to register your interest.

Happy computing community!!

26th May 2010 : What else happens at The Exchange??

2010-05-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

The Exchange is where it all happens! Aswell as computer lessons each week you can find all sorts of exciting things going on at the Exchange. See below for a sneak preview of what happened at The Exchange today

The lovely Shannon runs an art class which is held on a regular basis.

After busy mornings tending to the public; Shannon and Emily ease into a tasty lunch.

And you can even find children terrorizing dogs by not sharing their chippies...yes we have it all!

We even get into a bit of 'craft-ernoon' and homework on a Wednesday afternoon with children from the local community. Here we have, Bronwyn, Mina and Malwa with their 'beautiful' crowns on, and Emily and Malwa doing some mathematics homework!

That's about it for this week folks!
Bronwyn

Kicking along nicely at computer class

2010-03-10T12:24:00.000-08:00

Today was yet another great day at the Communify Community Computer class. We were very happy to welcome two new attendees to the class (Paul and Matthew), who were thrilled to experiment with Google Earth, YouTube and job hunting sites. Infact we even managed to get a couple of typing lessons in and accessed an email account which was setup some time ago! Nice memory with the password there Matthew! Rashid was in good typing form cracking out another one of his amazing stories on the keyboard and managed perfectly fine without tutor intervention, until the need arose for a font change! Now thats really stretching my abilities :). Husai and the was happy to practise her typing again and chilled out towards the end with listening to the dulcet tones of some favourite Afghanistan music. Robert and Darlene popped in for a bit of a quick low down on how to copy content from a CD to the hardrive of their computer, so left happily on their way after writing down a full A4 page of instructions. And last but not least there was the little honey Rian (3-4yrs old) who was delighted with all the motorcross action to be found on YouTube. I even managed to get him to say the word Motorbike, now thats effective learning right there!

Thanks alot to everyone and always to Emily and Shannon for their unrelenting enthusiasm!

Bronwyn Tutty

New comers Paul and Matthew

Rashid busting out his pearls of wisdom/creative genius on Microsoft Word

2010-02-25T12:11:00.000-08:00

The past couple of classes have seen Husai from Afghanistan achieve some amazing things. See below for some of the things that Husai can now do using Microsoft Word. There are a number of regular students in the class each week, and they are doing amazingly with improving on typing, web searches, sending and receiving emails, formatting and general computer usage. Each week there are new folk popping in with queries on a range of technical issues, most of the time the staff are able to solve their problems, sending them away very relieved of a 'nagging' computer issue.

Computer Class at The Exchange in Kelvin Grove

My name is Husai

I attend Computer Classes on Thursday

I come with my son Rian

I have 6 children, the other 5 are at school.

I have been to 6 or 7 computer classes

I have learnt to turn on the computer, type, simple word processing using Microsoft Word, search for movies on YouTube for my son and do some simple google searching.

I want to keep learning to use the computer and improve my typing.

Husai

Come along and see what we can do to help you do what you need to do on the computer!

Bronwyn

Day 10 - Back after the festive season, 10 minutes with Yasmin

2010-01-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

My name is Yasmin. I come in computer class. I come from Pakistan. I have been in Australia for about eight months but my husband immigrated to Australia in 2004. I live in Brisbane Queensland. I am married but I haven’t got any children. We speak Pashto at home. I study English on Mondays and Thursdays and I do sewing work at home. In my computer class I learn to type, I also have learnt to do formatting in Microsoft Word. My typing is much better since I began the computer classes. Our computer teacher is gooclasses I never used a computer before. I have only had 4 computer classes, over 1 month. My favourite thing to do in computer class is to practise typing. I will keep coming every week. I’m not sure what else I want to learn. Our teacher is good at teaching us, and especially me, how to use the computer better. Before I started these computer to learn but I want to keep learning how to use the computer better. I also learnt today how to find a picture using Google Images and Bronwyn showed me how to add it to the blog.

Yasmin (with a little help from Bronwyn Tutty, computer teacher)

Day 7 - The class gets festive!

2009-12-10T12:20:00.000-08:00

Today was a great day! We had 4 adults and 2 children and plenty of enthusiam! Its really amazing working with a group of people who are

so enthusiastic to learn the things i'm happy to teach! The Exchange staff and a volunteer were getting into the spirit of putting up christmas decorations around us so for some it meant tearning them away from their monitor just for a moment so the christmas helpers could do their work!

In our class today we covered a range of topics, including:

Neville - uploading photos to facebook and further explanation of how facebook works, in particular the security settings

Ian - Accessing an ebay account and navigating around the application, more gmail tips and tricks, opening multiple tabs in internet explorer so as to not have lots of separate sessions of the internet running

Husai - practising more typing lessons, in particular the home keys asdf gh jkl;, along with a few others. I was completely amazed at Husais speed with picking up 'typing', for someone who is using a computer for the 2nd time in their life I am astounded at the fast learning. It took me 20 years to be as competent as I am on the computer and Husai will probably be up tot the same speed in another 3 classes at this rate! We also went through turning off and starting up the computer along with downloading files to save to usb

Husais 2 children - searching youtube to listen to music from their home country of Afghanistan, along with playing online games - such well behaved children!

Lourdes - a quick session in changing the deskop photo on her private laptop

Bronwyn was also fortunate enough to get a call from her brother in New Zealand, what a treat that was, and best of all the entire class kept busy working on their computers needing no supervision for that time, now thats a real sign they're really learning something! And Bronwyn was ecstatic to hear from her brother, so everyone was happy. And that wraps up this class for the week.

Until next week, over and out & thank you to all participants for their enthusiasm and good spirits!

Bronwyn

Day 6 at 'The Exchange' Community Computer class

2009-11-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

Today was an action packed day full of language, computer and child entertaining challenges. We had our trusty student sister Eileen in tapping out an email to her niece in America, Husai and her gorgeous 3 year old son Re-ein who have recently arrived from across the seas, Darlene who was proud to announce that she is the new owner of her very own laptop and a few others who shall remain nameless (well actually I never quite had the time to ask their names due to language, computer and child minding distractions).

Today we learnt:

Accessing gmail (Eileen)
Creating an email account (Ian)
Online typing tutorials (Husai)
Setting up a new computer (Darlene)
Searching images on Google (Ian, Husai)
English - Pasto translator (Husai)
Seeking out amazing camping locations (Ian)

Thank you to everyong for your enthusiam, you make the classes such a treat to run!
Bronwyn

Day five

2009-11-05T19:22:00.000-08:00

Today was a mixture of learning, creating and patience.

Not only were our regular computer stars Robert and Jimmy with us today, we had a new face in the room..Rosie joined us this week hoping to add to her computer knowledge, mainly the functions on MS word.

Jimmy was keen to send a message to a friend on Facebook and was finally able to enter in his verification code so that he no longer has to type security passwords each time...patience was well and truly a virtue here as Jimmy had waited almost three weeks to make this happen.

Robert was wanting to copy his AC/DC cd's and download them onto his iPod...unfortunately this couldn't be done as iTunes is needed and the software is not available on the Exchange computers.

Rosie spent her time in Word utilising the array of icons, by typing a couple of sentences she could then test what these icons could do with the text. We also used shortcut keys like F7 for spellcheck, Alt F to take the cursor up to the menus and using the shift and arrow keys to highlight text...these shortcuts are great for having a break from the mouse as this is not always ergonomically friendly.

We also had a visit from Neville who was able to check his emails and I also passed onto him the information I had been given regarding the split memory on his computer. He will check his computer at home for another drive which should be where his other memory is and no doubt we will hear from him next week regarding this.

For those of you that weren't available today you were very much missed and we hope to see you next week:)

All in all a great day for everyone...good work!

Hannah

Day Four

2009-10-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

Today the lovely Bronwyn wasn't in so Hannah was on hand to answer any questions, most of which related to MS Word and the wonders it can do when typing a letter.

In the class today were Neville, Lourdes, Eileen and quick appearances from Sandy, Robert and Jimmy.

We covered more from the illustrious 'Tab' key, allowing the class to practice more short cuts and getting used to letting go of the mouse occassionally.

Eileen - was the cut & paste queen turning a perfectly typed letter into a jumble of words then putting it all back together again. She also learnt how to create paragraphs within a letter by using the 'Enter' key, how to highlight the typed text with the mouse and move it across the page (and back again) using the indent keys, we also covered the align text keys setting the paragraph to either left, centre, right or justifyed which is great for making a letter look tidier, and if that wasn't enough there was also the brilliance of line spacing which we set to double which allows for easier reading of each line.

Lourdes - replyed to an email from her daughter, then unfortunately lost it all before she was able to send it, this gave her an oppurtunity to practice her typing skills and do it all again. This time we discovered the 'Tab' key was being used when the 'Enter' key was needed to create a new paragraph which caused the cursor to move off the page....this is an important note, always be aware of where your cursor is on a page before using 'tab', 'enter', 'cut', 'paste', 'delete', 'backspace' or even the 'space' key.

Neville - received a number of emails, one of which included a gorgeous photo of a Sri Lanken family wedding, the bride looked stunning in red. He also had a question regarding 'partitioned memory' on his computer at home, unfortunately I was unable to answer this at the time but upon asking my trusted source I now have an answer so will pass this information on next week.

Jimmy - made a quick appearance just as we were finishing up so I was able to pass on a Facebook code from last week to help him send messages on facebook without having to type in a security code every time.

All in all today we made amazing progress with huge areas of learning, I'm looking forward to seeing you all again next week!

Hannah

Day Three

2009-10-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

Today was a great day for learning new tips & tricks, we were fortunate to have Bronwyns friend Hannah in helping us out, which was great because we had a great turnout. The class are making amazing progress and are enjoying learning curves. This week we covered:

Ripping & Burning cd's (Robert)
Sending an email to her daughter (Lourdes)
Setting up a Facebook account (Jimmy)
Searching Bing (Eileen)
Explaining the workings of email and facebook (all)
Uploading a new profile picture in facebook
Visitor came in wanting to connect to the network with a laptop, unfortunately we couldn't get him connected....a job for the IT people!

There was also the sharing in a few quick tips on the computer using the 'Tab' & 'Enter' buttons instead of clicking with the mouse...saves heaps of time & is easier than trying to get the mouse to where you want it on the page (Robert & Lourdes)

Nice work team, looking forward to next week
Bronwyn & Hannah

Day two

2009-10-14T18:32:00.001-07:00

Today was a great success!

We had Robert and Darlene back, Sandy from Scotland (who has lived in Australia for years and years but his accent tells otherwise), lovely Lourdes from the Phillipines and dear Sister Eileen all the way from Rosalie!

Today we covered:

Opening an email account (Eileen)
Saving photos from facebook to a computer and emailing on (Robert and Darlene)
Google Earth (Robert)
Navigating our way around Microsoft Word to create a letter (Sandy and Eileen)
Adjusting the volume when playing a song or video (Lourdes)
Enlarging the size of a photo (Lourdes)
Looking at facebook and making a friend request (Eileen)

Today was a big day but we all had a great time! Thanks everyone.
Bronwyn :)

Day one at The Exchange Community Centre Computer training classes

2009-10-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

Today marks the end of day one of The Exchange Community Centre computer training class. It was a great introduction to computers for a number of participants and was an opportunity for questions to be asked and answers to be given. Participants today were Richard and Darlene.

Topics we covered today were:

Setting up a new email account with Gmail (Richard)
Creating and sending email messages (Richard)
Opening attachments and sending attachments (Richard & Darlene)
Adding new email addresses to the address book (Richard)
Updating the profile picture in facebook (Darlene)

Everyone tried really hard and put alot of effort into the session which was great. And Richard even got sent away with some homework to work on between now and the next class, which will be held on Thursday 15th October from 9:30am - 12:00pm.

For further information, contact:

The Exchange, Shop 1 Blamey St Kelvin Grove (3 doors up from the corner of Musk Ave), Phone: 0731759975 or email exchange@communify.org.au