The Party’s Over – for this year!

That’s it people, game over, the curtain has closed on the final of my night classes this Academic year of 2009-10!  We started our series of adventures back in September and now it’s over for the summer break.  Time has flown by so fast – they say that happens when you enjoy yourself!

This was my tenth year of teaching Adult Education Classes at the Barry Comprehensive site, and we started off this year with three classes. Monday night we had our Digital Camera Class for Beginners. Tuesday night was our ever popular Digital Camera Class for Improvers, and Wednesdays was the PC Maintenance Class.  Sadly throughout the year, I lost the Monday class due to numbers, and for the summer term turned out somewhat complicated, but we devised a plan to keep the remaining classes alive!  All in all it was a brilliant year.

My thanks as ever go out to all of my students, who have given up their evenings this year to come along to the classes. It is the interest, the enthusiasm, the dedication of the students that makes it worthwhile, and makes me want to continue what has become a really enjoyable second job for me!

I have always said that when teaching these classes becomes a bind, or I get bored, then that would be the time to hang up my hat, and on that note, for those interested, I will be coming back again in September for another round of classes for the Academic Year of 2010-11. Hopefully some of the regulars will come back and harass me next year…..errr I mean come back for more learning!

In the meantime check back throughout the summer months, I will post a blog about the Art Exhibition next week, and carrying on blogging to keep you posted various items of interest as they crop up….so come back soon!

Enjoy the summer everyone.

See you in September!

PC Maintenance Class 10: Term 3

I thought as this was the last class, that we would start of, where for me, it all began, with my own BBC Model B Microcomputer. It was the first computer I had, and I had it in about 1985!

The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Designed with an emphasis on education, it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability and the quality of its operating system.

While nine models were eventually produced with the BBC brand, the term "BBC Micro" is usually colloquially used to refer to the first six (Model A, B, B+64 and B+128, Master 128, Master compact), with the subsequent models considered as part of the Archimedes series.

My original BBC is long gone now, but I managed to buy a replacement recently, and it was stunning condition, as you can see from these pictures. I am currently looking out for a good quality floppy disk drive for it, know of one? Email me!!

After I demonstrated and discussed the inner workings of this machine, we talked about various other ‘old school’ computers that each of us had in past years!  Roger brought in his usual list of questions, which I answered for him, and with the distant rattle of Jim’s key’s coming to lock up, so ended the last of my nightclasses for the academic year 2009-10. I cannot believe that time has flown by so fast….it seemed like yesterday we began our adventure into the world of PC Maintenance and Computers.

As they say in the cartoons…….”That’s all for now folks!”

Digital Camera Class 10: Term 3

Tonight’s class was more of a get together and discussion of various things. We have, because of the weather, been able to get out and about taking photographs at various locations around the Vale of Glamorgan. 

Colin was back from his annual holiday to Egypt. He spent some time showing us the photographs that he had taken with his ‘phone’.  His Samsung phone has a built in 8 megapixel camera in it. Although he did take his other two camera’s. He had a wonderful time, despite it being ever so hot – about 52°C on one occasion!

Mandy had a few questions about Paint Shop Pro X2, as did Colin, which I was able to demonstrate on Mandy’s laptop, as she had it with her.

I also encouraged them to send in any photographs that they wanted displayed in the Art Exhibition at Palmerston Centre, which is next Wednesday.

Well that’s it – that’s a wrap!  The last Digital Camera class of this Academic year – what will I do on Tuesdays from now till September??

PC Maintenance Class 9: Term 3

Where is the time going, Class Nine already of the summer term! Time does indeed fly when you are having fun!

Tonight David brought in his computer, it had developed a problem, it wouldn’t start up.  Tonight of all nights, I hadn’t brought any screwdrivers with me, but luckily Keith had some in his car.  Taking the lid of David’s computer, it became apparent that the power supply was the cause of the fault. We made a note of the type of power supply and used one of the schools computers to do an Internet search for a suitable replacement. We found that Amazon.co.uk sold them, but obviously David couldn’t order online, so we found a telephone number for him to speak to Amazon. He will pursue this tomorrow.

Roger reported to the class that his computer was working better than ever….it’s always good to here positive news too!

After having a coffee break in the school’s Cybercafe, we went back to the class, and had a look at what is known as Hiren's Boot CD.  Hiren’s Boot CD  is a live CD containing various diagnostic programs such as partitioning agents, system performance benchmarks, disk cloning and imaging tools, data recovery tools, MBR tools, BIOS tools, and many others for fixing various computer problems . We had a look at some of the tools such as the memory checker, and a nice utility that does a low level format of the drive, so you can safely dispose it without the fear of your data being found or recovered.

It’s the last class next week, so stay tuned for an update on our final session for this Academic Year.