From the Chair

It’s only been a couple of weeks since I last wrote to you from the Chair but a lot has happened at SeniorNet Kapiti since then…

Our Open Days were a huge success with plenty of interest from passers by at Coastlands and a steady stream of new members visiting the Learning Centre on the Saturday. Our thanks go to Westpac, one of our national sponsors, for allowing us to sit outside their premises all day – it’s a great people-watching spot as well as an excellent location to draw people’s attention to all the ways SeniorNet might help them on their digital learning journey.

My thanks also to the Committee Members and Tutors who sat on the desk at Coastlands fielding all sorts of questions and queries about SeniorNet as well as signing people up to join. The good news for us is that our classes are filling fast for Term 1 but the bad news for you is that if you want to attend a Course or Workshop, you need to contact Elaine soon to avoid missing out.

The next big item on the Committee’s calendar is the Regional Meeting in March. Being hosted by SeniorNet Hutt City, this will be the first opportunity for us to engage with our fellow SeniorNetters in several years. The key topics of conversation will be “Finding and retaining new members” and the 2021 SeniorNet Theme “The Confidence Conversation”. .

Tomorrow, my wife and I head off for a 2-week Road Trip around the North Island. In a quiet moment recently I was adding up all the digital tools we have and will use for our trip and the list was surprising. My wife booked our accommodation using Booking.com, AirBnB and (I think) Book-a-Bach. She researched places to visit using the MS Edge browser and Google Maps and kept track of everything on an Excel spreadsheet.

We’ll use the Google Maps App on our phones for navigation through the North Island backroads while listening to our CD Collection via Bluetooth on the car radio. Our hobby is Geocaching and we’ll use the Cachly App (and sometimes my “old” Garmin hand-held GPS) to find hidden caches in all sorts of interesting places.

I’ll use the Reader App on my tablet to read books in the evening and of course the Mail App to keep in touch with the world and the Facebook App to keep up with the goings on in the family. At some point I’m sure my wife will use the WhatsApp App on her phone to video chat with her 80yr old mother…and probably her sister and our son & grandson too!

The Booking.com App on my phone will be available if we need to contact any of our accommodation hosts and of course the Browser App is always there if we want more information about something we see or hear about along the way. This will all rely on free WiFi where we can find it, topped up by mobile data on our phones when needed.

Of course that’s not counting the eye-watering technology under the bonnet of our car, which we simply take for granted and complain about when it doesn’t work!!

We’re surrounded by technology in today’s world and often don’t even realise that we are using it. In my experience, most people know far more about technology than they realise or will admit! Our job at SeniorNet is to encourage everyone to embrace the digital world and make it work for them. Technology for technology’s sake is of no use to anyone but if we can build your confidence to make it work for you then we’ve done our “job”.

Why not have another look at our Term 1 Courses and Workshops and see if there’s something new you could learn about the technology surrounding you every day. Thanks for being a member of SeniorNet Kapiti and I’ll “see” you in a couple of weeks.

Peter Bunkall
Chair, SeniorNet Kapiti Inc.

Upcoming Occasional Workshops – Term 1

While most of our courses and workshops are held regularly throughout the term, these occasional workshops are scheduled to cover specific requests, or situations such as the approaching need for internet banking skills.

Upcoming workshops are:

Introduction to Facebook – 17th February (afternoon)
Come and find out about this ubiquitous Social Media site and why you don’t need to be afraid to belong. There are plenty of ways to control what you see and who you engage with and it’s an excellent way to keep in touch with family scattered throughout the country and overseas
Introduction to Internet Banking – 22nd February (afternoon)
With the demise of cheques upon us, this is a great Workshop to find out how Internet Banking works, how the banks protect you and what you have to do to get started. This Workshop is supported by Westpac but you DO NOT have to bank with them to get the most from this session.
Introduction to One Drive – 4th March (afternoon)
OneDrive is the free Cloud Storage every PC user had access to through their Microsoft Account. Come along and find out what OneDrive is about, how you can use it yourself and also how it can be used for sharing documents and pictures with friends and family all over the world

To enrol in any of these workshops please contact Elaine on 021 169 6256

The Internet Banking Workshop is limited in numbers – if the 22nd February date fills up we will schedule another workshop later in the term.

Windows Users Workshop – 4 March 2021 (9:30am)

In our December 2020 Newsletter, we mentioned that our Q & A Workshop has been “archived”. In its place is the new Windows Users Workshop. The first session of this new monthly workshop is scheduled for Thursday 4th March at 9:30 am.

With Windows 10 updates coming out on a regular basis it pays to know how to handle these – whether to rush to install them, and whether they will prove useful to you. The impact of these updates and all manner of other Windows PC/laptop subjects will be covered in this regular workshop.

Coincidentally the latest update, known as 20H2, was released in late 2020, and amongst other things it bakes the Chromium-based version of the Microsoft Edge browser firmly into Windows 10.

All Windows PC and laptop users are cordially invited to come along to the workshop and keep yourself up to date. If you have any questions of a general nature, please send them through to Peter Jones (at kapiti@seniornet.co.nz) prior to the workshop in case he needs to do some homework!

The structure of the Windows Users Workshop will be similar to the existing iPad/iPhone and Smartphone (Android) regular monthly workshops. There will be a Special Topic in the first half before morning tea and an open Q&A Forum after the break where any Windows-based queries will be tackled.

We encourage you to pencil this Workshop into your diary on the first Thursday morning every month.

AMI Offer to Existing SeniorNet Members

As detailed in our December and January Newsletters, AMI will pay the SeniorNet membership fees of their clients for the 2021-2022 year. This applies to current AMI customers who are existing members of SeniorNet, or any of their customers who wish to join SeniorNet within the offer period (which ends September 2021).

If you have a friend who’d like to take advantage of this offer and join SeniorNet for free, get them to go to our Membership Application Form here (and remember to confirm on the form that they are AMI customers).

For existing SeniorNet members, full details were outlined in a recent email, and we urge you to take advantage of this offer here.

Fancy Helping Out at SeniorNet?

We are always looking for members willing to assist with the running of our Courses and Workshops – anything from (wo)manning the door, making the tea & coffee thru to assisting and running the sessions themselves.

If you are interested in helping in any way, please contact Sue Connor – just leave a message on our answerphone (tel: 04 299 0754) and she’ll call you back.

Does this look familiar?

Please Support our Sponsors

Please don’t forget to support our National sponsors – they’re important to SeniorNet and help us at the local level in many ways, including offering discounts to our members.

Always show your membership card and ask if there’s a discount for SeniorNet members – you might be rather surprised!

The best example is Noel Leeming where the SeniorNet discount extends well beyond computers to everything in their store!

Suzuki also offer our members a discount on new vehicles so it always pays to ask.

There are more details about the individual sponsorships on the Federation’s website here