Issue
number one hundred and six (October 2009) in a series of Signposts from
WorldU3A Inter-national Group and U3AOnline Australia, sent once a month,
to any and all U3A members anywhere in the world.
Please send snippets of possible interest to one of the editors.
Feel free to copy
this information in your newsletters.
October 2009
Web manager
Vennela
vennela@holloways.org
29th August 2009
Sharen
McDonald (MILR 20th Anniversary Committee) Montreal, Canada.
It is with great pleasure that we invite all members of U3A anywhere in
the world to join us in celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the McGill
Institute for Learning in Retirement (MILR) We hope that you will visit
our 20th Anniversary website: http://milr20.mcgill.ca/
We
invite you to send a one-page illustrated greeting from your group to
sharenm@gmail.com to enliven our celebration meeting.
Photographic
Groups: Click here
to learn how to take and edit digital photographs using visual tutorials
that emphasize concept over procedure, independent of specific digital camera
or lens. Topics range from basic camera tips to advanced techniques. (Thank
you Brian Spilsbury - U3A Australia). 
Painting:
Itching to extend your painting skills but can't get to the next U3A
Artists Group? Try http://www.simplypainting.com/
and have a look at some of the free lessons from Frank Clarke. You can also
join discussions at Craft Crowd at http://www.craftcrowd.com/
which is a Social Network for people invloved in Arts & Crafts. They
seem to be a jolly lot and its completely free.
Local
U3A Groups of any size: Welcome to U3A Widebay in Queensland. An entirely
fictitious but superb example of how to build a website for your group,
whether large or small, using freely available resources. Have a look at
http://sites.google.com/site/u3awidebay/home
(Thank you Sharen Wood of U3A Bundaberg, Queensland - and congratulations
on a really spiffing bit of work). 
Computer
Users: An item on BBC's 'Working Lunch' programme deals with the issue
of free software.
Brian Spilsbury of U3A Australia makes the point "I think it is beyond doubt that Openoffice - http://www.openoffice.org/ - is equivalent to MS Office in capability and most features but does not work exactly the same. Personally I like that you can legally give away copies of the Openoffice CD to friends and relatives to help them with their computing.
This makes it an ideal
program for U3As to give away to members and set
up classes to help everyone minimise the cost of using a computer".
Have
you answered Richard's question yet? - an invitation to take part into
research into changing attitudes. Just a few minutes of your time giving
an opinion on how a certain situation should be handled will help our U3A
colleague Lesley Newson, who is doing this research with University of Exeter.
For further explanation and details, click here.
