The April meeting of the Lenawee PC Users Group took place Monday,  April 19th, at  6:00 PM, in the Lenawee County Library meeting room.   There were 16 members present.  Our meetings are on the third Monday of the month starting at 6:00 P.M. and ending at 7:45 P.M. 

Our April program was on Social Networking, presented by librarian KT Mockensturm.  Libraries are slowly incorporating social networking features into their domain, since libraries are about ideas, information, and communication.  There appears to be a generation gap between the thirties and under population, and older folks about the uses and benefits of using social networking tools to meet the goals of libraries and the population in general.  The computer club membership is overwhelmingly composed of the "over thirty" crowd and we are still catching up on the learning curve about this new method of using our PCs.

KT was able to bridge the generation gap and organize a complex new phenomenon into easily understood modules.  We looked at Facebook, Twitter, Wiki, Blogs, and Linkedin.  Each of these networking sites fill a particular need.  Facebook offers a way of connecting with old friends, interacting with friends and family members who may be litterally spread across the world.  I keep up with my daughter's life more since she moved to Massachusetts than when she lived in Adrian!  Twitter, allows exchange of short messages, that are something like comments that you might make if someone were in another room in you house.  Just another way to keep in touch and socially engaged.  Wiki is used to organize activities among a group of people.  Professors have found this to be an excellent tool in keeping contact with students who are taking their courses.  Blogs are more like online diaries but can deal with subtantive issues that one wishes to share with the world or maybe just some friends that share common interests.  Finally Linkedin is more of a social networking site for people who share similar vocations or, more broadly, small business owners, Etc.  This kind of networking allows the sharing of professional information and making professional contacts that foreward one's vocational endevors.  This is just a brief overview of the program.  KT shared her outline with us that combine links to sites that are examples of the above social networking tools.  She also inadvertantly demonstraited a neat teaching tool using video clips on the web to explain more fully each of the networking tools that she presented.

After KT's excellent presentation, we had time to consider questions about general personal computing issues.  We talked about handling multiple operating systems on one computer, how to use Google Image search, setting up routers for your own wi-fi, among many other topics.

Page last updated 04/24/10