At the workshop, you will learn how to find, understand and use information published on Directgov — the huge official government website http://direct.gov.uk/.
The list below is just a sample of the range of topics which might interest you or affect you …
Education and learning.
Employment.
Money, tax and benefits.
Home and community.
Disabled people.
Travel and transport.
Pensions and retirement planning.
Caring for someone.
Crime and justice.
Environment and greener living.
Health and well-being.
Government, citizens and rights.
Britons living abroad.
Please bring your questions to the workshop.
Reserve your workshop place.
Reserving a workshop place is essential. The only way to reserve is by asking us directly.
Some of your fellow Hackney Silver Surfers are learning documentary film techniques at the Documentary Filmmakers Group in Shacklewell Lane.
We have four small teams, each responsible for making a five-minute video.
One of the teams is making a video about memories of the music brought from Jamaica to Dalston in the 1950s and 1960s.
If you remember those days, if that music was important to you then, or if you remember the Four Aces Club in Dalston Lane back in the 1960s and 1970s — we would like to hear from you.
If you can help (or if you know anyone who can), please send an email to acc@lawns.org.uk .
We will show you how to install and use BBC iPlayer, which lets you download most BBC TV programs to your own computer, then watch them for up to 30 days, without a TV licence.
ACC members can reserve places at this workshop by sending an email to acc@lawns.org.uk (if you don’t trust your own email skills, please ask for help).
An opportunity to see this special programme of films from the Hackney Archive, which also includes new footage collected during the Rio’s recent ‘Home Movies’ project. The original screening of this programme took place in January to a packed house. Now the Rio is offering three opportunities for the over-60s to see this material for free!
Part of a series of events to mark the Rio’s landmark 100th anniversary, this screening features footage of Hackney landmarks throughout the last century, enabling us all to relive the borough’s rich and vibrant history on the big screen.
Plus – free tea and biscuits!
Screening Dates.
Wednesday 17 March 2010: 11 am.
Wednesday 24 March 2010: 11 am.
Wednesday 5 May 2010: 11 am.
Doors open at 10.15 am.
For more information please call Jemma on 020 7241 9419 or email jemma@riocinema.org.uk .
Radio 2′s Get Connected campaign launches on Monday 1 March 2010. The aim of the campaign is to help more of our listeners get online and understand digital technology better. The campaign will run across the network for the entire month, with many shows involved including Weekend Wogan, The Chris Evans Breakfast Show, The Jeremy Vine Show, Steve Wright in the Afternoon, Simon Mayo’s Drivetime, Ken Bruce, Alex Lester, and Aled Jones’ Good Morning Sunday.
This is huge, so we are not going to attempt to cover all of it. However, here are some of the topics we are ready for …
Downloading and installing a media or audio player on your own computer at home. We like iTunes for organising music files, and VLC as a general-purpose media player (it’s the default at the Agewell Computer Club).
Understanding MP3 files (most digital music files are MP3 format).
Where to find music to download.
Legal and copyright issues.
Please bring your own questions to the workshop.
ACC members can reserve places on these workshops by sending an email to acc@lawns.org.uk (if you don’t trust your own email skills, please ask for help).
Note added 2 March: this workshop seems to be almost fully booked — perhaps one or two places available.
At this workshop we will look at some of the things you might want to do after you have taken your digital photographs. This will not be a workshop about how to use your camera, or about photographic techniques.
Here are some questions we anticipate …
How to transfer digital photographs from a camera to a computer hard disk or to a flash drive.
How to see what the photographs look like.
How to manage and organise thousands of digital photographs.
How to backup and preserve important photographs.
How to convert photographs to a format and size suitable for email and web sites.
Please bring your own questions to the workshop.
ACC members can reserve places on these workshops by sending an email to acc@lawns.org.uk (if you don’t trust your own email skills, please ask for help).
Note added 23 February: this workshop seems to be almost fully booked — perhaps one or two places available.
We are calling on African Caribbean men and women across Hackney who have been touched by prostate cancer to help raise awareness of the disease and the fact that African Caribbean men are three times more likely to develop prostate cancer than white men.
We are currently looking for volunteers in Hackney to train as ‘Community Champions’ to give awareness raising talks to the local community or help distribute our information.
We need your help in overcoming the cultural myths and the resistance to talking about prostate cancer in the community and we need men who have already experienced the disease to stand up and say to others that this is nothing to hide from.
For more information please contact Sarah Toule on 020 8222 7149, email olderandwiser@prostate-cancer.org.uk.
At this workshop we will demonstrate a USB turntable that creates MP3 versions of vinyl tracks. Conventional turntables send a signal to speakers through an amplifier. This turntable sends the signal to computer software, which converts it to a computer music file.
MP3, by the way, is a very common way of encoding music and other sound files.
The USB turntable must (of course) be attached to a computer, so that the MP3 files can be saved on the hard disk. The default storage location is within an iTunes folder – if it exists (it’s not essential).
Please bring your own questions to the workshop. Bring some vinyl too — but the vinyl must be clean.
ACC members can reserve places on these workshops by asking us directly, or by sending an email to acc@lawns.org.uk (if you don’t trust your own email skills, please ask for help).
Think about the importance of email in the world we live in now.
Look at how Agewell Computer Club members use email to keep in close touch with all their family and friends, wherever they live.
Show you how to read, send and reply to email messages.
Show you how to save ‘attachments’ that have been sent to you.
Show you how to send attachments to your own emails.
Show you how to manage ‘address books’ and contact lists.
Please bring your own questions to the workshop.
ACC members can reserve places on these workshops by asking us directly, or by sending an email to acc@lawns.org.uk (if you don’t trust your own email skills, please ask for help).
We will be demonstrating email with the seniors.org.uk email package that most new members learn with. People with email addresses at gmail.com, googlemail.com, or bold.org.uk will be OK. Others should definitely try to reserve a place, as we have to create a seniors.org.uk address for you in advance of the workshop.
At this workshop, we will show you how to use Irfanview — the default image editor and viewer at the Agewell Computer Club (that means it is on all our computers, and easy to find if you are logged in as ‘agewell’).
About Irfanview …
It’s free (for personal and educational use), highly-regarded, has been around for years, and has a large user base.
It’s used for viewing digital images, and performing basic image editing tasks such as cropping, rotating and resizing — all of which it does very well.
You can download it and install it on your own computer at home.
There is a ‘portable’ version which you can put on your flash drive.
It has a simple interface to scanners — you can scan directly into Irfanview.
Things we would like to do.
Help you understand digital image file formats.
Show you how to use Irfanview on our computers at The Lawns.
Show you how to download Irfanview from irfanview.com, and install it yourself.
Help you install Irfanview on a flash drive (don’t forget to bring a flash drive if you want to do this).
Show you how to scan new images from our scanners directly into Irfanview.
Show you how to process photographs to make them suitable for email and World Wide Web sites such as Facebook and Internet dating sites.
Demonstrate Picasa — a free Google program for organising and editing images, and a good choice for anyone who has a lot of digital photographs to manage.
Things we might not do.
Discuss email attachments — that it is one of the topics of the 15 February workshop.
Discuss how to transfer digital photographs from your camera to a computer or other storage media — that it is one of the topics of the 1 March workshop.
Thanks to grants from Film London and the Goldsmiths’ Company, the Rio is beginning a series of events to mark their landmark 100th anniversary celebration with a special screening of films from the Hackney Archives.
The event will also feature new footage discovered during the Rio’s recent ‘Home Movies’ project. The films are a rich source of memories, featuring footage of Hackney landmarks throughout the last century, enabling us all to relive Hackney’s vibrant history on the big screen.
Saturday 30 January 2010, 1.30 pm.
Tickets: £4 (£3 Concessions & Rio Friends).
To book tickets, or for more information, please contact: Rio Cinema, 107 Kingsland High Street, Dalston, E8 2PB / 020 7241 9410 .
This will be a repeat of the 15 January workshop Using the World Wide Web which so many people could not get into. It’s the first of two ‘Using the Internet’ workshops – aimed at beginners, but also suitable for others who would like to refresh their skills and understanding. We will, of course, begin at the beginning!
What will we do?
We will …
Find out what the World Wide Web actually is.
Look at some of the really useful and entertaining things you can do with it.
Discover how to get into it — how to use a web browser to open up web sites, and then navigate through them.
Get on top of some of the jargon which confuses WWW learners.
Come and unleash your creativity in an eight-week series of creative writing workshops at the Geffrye Museum, with local resident and award-winning writer Donna Daley-Clarke.
This club is for any local resident over the age of 55 who is interested in writing — both beginners and budding authors. Use the Geffrye’s historic almshouse to trigger your thoughts, memories and inspire your writings.
Dates: Tuesdays 2 February, 9 February, 23 February, 9 March, 16 March, 23 March, 30 March and 20 April, 2010.
Times: 10.00 – 11.45 am.
The sessions are free, but places are limited and must be booked in advance. Tea, coffee and materials are provided.
Please contact: Sarah Fairbairn, Bookings & Information Officer, Tel: 020 7739 9893, email: bookings@geffrye-museum.org.uk .
Workshop: 
Workshop: 
A message from Sarah Fairbairn, 
