In our PC Maintenance Class, we now exclusively use Glary Utilities as our tool of choice for helping with computer cleanup. Here's a recent video blog post that talks about the program.
This recording is the first of five episodes from our recent Webinar on Online Learning. During the 50 minute webinar, the first by John Lortz at DiscoverSkills.com, we discussed the various methods involved in online learning, including webinars, eBooks, blogging, online video, and YouTube. As the Senior Health Foundation moves more of it’s computer and digital photography classes online, it’s important for our students to understand how to access and use the various online learning methods, and this webinar give them an introduction.
This recording is the second of five episodes from our recent Webinar on Online Learning. During the 50 minute webinar, the first by John Lortz at DiscoverSkills.com, we discussed the various methods involved in online learning, including webinars, eBooks, blogging, online video, and YouTube. As the Senior Health Foundation moves more of it’s computer and digital photography classes online, it’s important for our students to understand how to access and use the various online learning methods, and this webinar give them an introduction.
The 50 minute webinar has been edited into 5 parts, and this is the second one, that includes information about eBooks.
This recording is the third of five episodes from our recent Webinar on Online Learning. During the 50 minute webinar, the first by John Lortz at DiscoverSkills.com, we discussed the various methods involved in online learning, including webinars, eBooks, blogging, online video, and YouTube. As the Senior Health Foundation moves more of it’s computer and digital photography classes online, it’s important for our students to understand how to access and use the various online learning methods, and this webinar give them an introduction.
The 50 minute webinar has been edited into 5 parts, and this is the third one, that includes information about Blogging.
This recording is the fourth of five episodes from our recent Webinar on Online Learning. During the 50 minute webinar, the first by John Lortz at DiscoverSkills.com, we discussed the various methods involved in online learning, including webinars, eBooks, blogging, online video, and YouTube. As the Senior Health Foundation moves more of it’s computer and digital photography classes online, it’s important for our students to understand how to access and use the various online learning methods, and this webinar give them an introduction.
The 50 minute webinar has been edited into 5 parts, and this is the fourth one, that includes information about Online Video.
This recording is the final of five episodes from our recent Webinar on Online Learning. During the 50 minute webinar, the first by John Lortz at DiscoverSkills.com, we discussed the various methods involved in online learning, including webinars, eBooks, blogging, online video, and YouTube. As the Senior Health Foundation moves more of it’s computer and digital photography classes online, it’s important for our students to understand how to access and use the various online learning methods, and this webinar give them an introduction.
The 50 minute webinar has been edited into 5 parts, and this is the last one, that includes information about YouTube and our conclusions.
Although we’ve been discussing methods of online learning in our video blog series, we’re taking a short break from that topic to talk about our favorite Windows cleanup tool, Glary Utilities.
In this DiscoverSkills Video Blog, we give you an overview of the program, with the hint that we’ll be coming out with future videos that talk about each Glary Utility feature in detail.
In this second video blog in our series about Online Learning Methods, we discuss the different types of Webinars, and explain the basics of how a Webinar works. By the way, elsewhere in our blog, you can find video recordings of the webinars that DiscoverSkills.com presents.
One of our goals at the Senior Health Foundation and DiscoverSkills.com, is to introduce our students to technology trends that they might find useful, but that perhaps they are avoiding because the technology seems a bit intimidating.
In this edition of our tech blog, we get started in explaining all the new ways you have of “learning online”, and specifically, explain “blogging” and even more importantly, “video blogging“. In fact, this particular blog IS a video blog, and you can watch it by clicking on the video player below.
In future “online learning” blogs, we’ll also be discussing “webinars“, “video tutorials”, “podcasting“, and other Web technologies that are emerging as wonderful ways to learn. These topics are especially important to us here at Senior Health, because these technologies are helping us to expand our program outside the traditional classroom, and affect students all over the world.
Back in the old “point and shoot” days of film cameras, the word “zoom” wasn’t something we used too often. Most point and shoots had a “fixed” lens that gave you one focal length and nothing else (i.e. one viewing perspective, so that to make the subject bigger or smaller in the viewfinder, you had to physically move closer or father away). The only folks who had “zoom” capability where those that had higher end rangefinder cameras or 35mm SLR’s (single lens reflex – fancy cameras with interchangeable lenses).
But as with a lot of other features that use to only be on “professional” cameras, our new digital point and shoot cameras now have that wonderful feature called a zoom lens. So, what’s it all about and how do we use it?
Well, the core purpose of a zoom lens is to let you get closer to a subject without moving closer physically. It lets you take a tighter shot of that distant buffalo, or get nice and close in on someones face as they stand in a group of people. Which leads me to say that what a zoom lens REALLY does is let you more creatively compose your picture. As you view your scene through the viewfinder or by the LCD on the back of your camera, the zoom feature lets you play with how the scene looks without physically moving an inch. It gives you that added dimension of visually comparing a nice tight shot to a wide angle shot, letting you choose which will be the best for this particular “Kodak moment“.
In other words, you should treat zoom as a creative tool, and experiment with it. It’s as simple as that.
Now, some tips on using zoom…
One of the biggest mistakes that all of us make when composing a picture is not “filling the frame” with our subject. How often have you taken a picture of someone and then as you view it on your computer or as a print, wish you had a pair of scissors so you could cut out all the “extra stuff” surrounding your subject? Your camera zoom gives you the ability to do that before you even take the picture. Just remember… keep it tight, keep it tight, keep it tight….
Although camera “aperture” is the main way we control depth of field (i.e. how much of our picture from close to far is in focus), zooming also affects this important photographic attribute. The closer you zoom in, the narrower the depth of field. This means zooming in is great for doing “portrait” types of pictures. Try this… the next time you’re taking a picture of someone, rather than getting physically close to them, back away and zoom in tight. If you use the LCD to compose your picture, you should actually see that background objects will look out of focus, which is exactly what you want.
Jack Batting
Your digital camera actually has two types of zoom… optical and digital. We only half-jokingly call these two “good and bad” zoom, because optical zoom is “true” zoom that uses the optics of your lens, while digital zoom is “fake” zoom where the camera electronics simply enlarge a portion of the camera sensor chip that is absorbing your picture. With the latter, as the chip portion is enlarged, the pixels of the chip get bigger, giving you an image that is “pixelated” and crummy looking. The moral here is… try to just use your optical zoom, and if you can, even turn your digital zoom OFF in your camera menu system.
Although we tend to take it for granted, or even sometimes forget about it, using your digital camera zoom really can be a creative tool for getting the best possible picture. In fact, we feel so strongly about it, we’ve dedicated one of our “Weekly Wednesday Windshield Webcasts” to discussing zoom even a bit more. Although this webcast is in our member-only area, you can view it right here in this blog post.
DiscoverSkills Blog
