|
LOCATION OF CLUB: |
| The Old Caretakers Cottage, Castle Hill Showground, end of Doran Drive. |
| POSTAL ADDRESS: |
| PO Box 831 Castle Hill NSW 1765 |
| DAYS AND HOURS OF OPERATION: |
| Five days a week 10:00 am
to 4:00 pm. One Student to one Trainer for “beginners” – Training on a Monday, Tuesday and Friday. Class lessons run throughout the week. The training year is from the end of January through to mid December other than Public Holidays. |
| CONTACT PERSON & PHONE NUMBER: |
| Club: 02 9899 9131 Secretary: Noel Milligan 02 9629 8581 nmilligan@netspace.net.au |
| E-Mail Address: |
| cphills@tpg.com.au |
| WEBSITE: |
| www.users.tpg.com.au/cphills |
| HISTORY OF CLUB: |
| Computer Pals for Seniors -
The Hills was formed in May 1998 to help Seniors learn about
computing while having fun. From a small beginning the club has
grown to a membership of over 500 for the last three years or so.
Membership is open to all Seniors. The club provides tuition,
technical advice and assistance to its members in most facets of
computer usage. Beginners and those curious about computers are
especially welcome, with the club catering for all levels of
experience and need. Following two club relocations since 1998, in April 2002 the club moved to our current premises, a cottage within the Castle Hill Showground. We have two class rooms an office and kitchen. Our classes can handle up to 12 students with a computer for each student. The clubrooms are fully operational 5 days per week for 10½ months of the year – we close for a well earned break in mid December and resume at the end of January. The beginner’s courses, Computer Fundamentals, are conducted in a one student to one trainer situation. Other special interest courses are run as a classes or workshops, and apart from the Senior Trainer Presenter there are also assistant Trainers helping students in the class. There are more than 70 regular volunteer Trainers currently involved in the beginner and special courses. There is a moderate fee for each course to cover the production of an instruction manual, floppy disc and/or CD for each student. Courses include Fundamentals (covering the Windows 98 to XP Operating Systems), plus, a wide range of special interest courses including: Word Processing, Graphics in Word, Scanning & Printing, Introduction to the Internet, Corel Photo-Paint (3 courses - Introduction, Intermediate, Advanced), CorelDraw, Digital Cameras, Microsoft Publisher, Excel, PowerPoint, Card Workshop in Word, Digital Video Editing, Building your own Computer - 3 stages. All our computers run Windows XP and either Office 2002 or 2003. Conversion notes for older systems are available for some courses. Most of our class training is accompanied by visual displays of exercises projected on a screen. Computer Fundamentals lessons are for 1 hour each week and students are given homework. Class Courses are for 2 to 3 hours duration once a week and can run from 4 to 8 weeks. We regularly run Train the Trainers courses to keep our Trainers up to date and assist them with teaching skills. We encourage and support the formation of special interest groups within the club, such as Genealogy, Share Trading, Creative Writing, Linux, Computer Maintenance, etc., where members with a common interest can share and swap information. Our Club’s aim is - “To expand the learning and leisure horizons of Senior Citizens in our Community” in a comfortable and friendly environment. |