Research Your Nova Scotia Family Tree

This site has an innovative approach to showing geographically the concentrations for surnames within the province (in orange) - an overlay of the local historical organizations/museums (in blue) then helps show researchers resources that could be of assistance to the search.

Check it out at: Research Your Nova Scotia Family Tree

Seniors College - Family History Class Resources

Seniors College of PEI is again offering Bringing Family History to Life: The Techniques & Technology of Family History Research.

Taught by Ian Scott and Bob Ramsay, the course has a class resource page with helpful links related to the various topics covered:

• Family History Class Resources

Winter 2011 Courses - Locations Finalized

Classrooms for the following courses at UPEI have now been identified:

Understanding Jazz -- MAIN Building Room 113;
Digital Photography I -- MAIN Building Room 116;
Islam -- MAIN Building Room 113;
Film Appreciation -- AVC Lecture Theatre A;
Decorating 101 -- Kelley Building Room 211

See full schedule on the main Seniors College website.

Celebrating a Decade of the Arts at Seniors College

Seniors College of PEI announced an exciting new project at its Christmas Get Together held on December 6th at the Jack Blanchard Family Centre. With funding from a Government of Canada

New Horizons Leadership grant, the project will celebrate the accomplishments of its member artists, writers, musicians, photographers and actors who have developed their skills in courses taken at Seniors College over the past ten years.

Seniors College will mount an exhibition of paintings, drawings and digital photographs by students of art classes held throughout the Island. Their work will appear in a gallery exhibition and will continue to appear in a virtual gallery on-line.

In addition, the College will publish a journal of creative writings by the students of the creative writing classes, both in hard copy and on-line.

The choral music class will produce a CD of their music from the past several years and share it with the community on-line.

Finally, the most ambitious part of the project will be the launch of The Venerables, a play that ran for over 20 years and helped focus attention on issues and societal views on aging. This will be a live production with a web based version also available.

“This is an important and exciting community project,”says Ian Scott, Past President of Seniors College and Chair of the New Horizons Project. “For everyone learning new skills in retirement, having their work publicly displayed or aired recognizes the value and enrichment that their creative efforts give to our own communities and worldwide on the Internet.”

Julie Dowling, President of Seniors College, says, “After a decade of developing creative arts programs for hundreds of PEI seniors all across the Island, we wanted to celebrate these contributions by sharing their work with the broader community. Now, with the help of the New Horizons grant, all four components of the project will come together at a celebration event in the fall of 2011.”

Seniors College is a dynamic and rapidly growing organization devoted to providing learning opportunities for seniors on Prince Edward Island. The College offers a wide range of stimulating courses in three regions of PEI from October to May.

How to Make a Photo Greeting Card within Windows XP using Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

How to Make a Photo Greeting Card within Windows XP using Windows Picture and Fax Viewer

1. Right click on start button at bottom left corner

2. Select Explore

3. In Window Explorer, navigate to you the My Pictures folder - and locate a picture that you wish to use for a card.

4. Double click on that image to open it within Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (assuming it is your default viewer – if not - right click on the file and select the option ‘Open With’ and then open it within Windows Picture and Fax Viewer)

5. Rotate the picture so that it is upside down on the screen

6. Click on the Printer icon

7. The Photo Printing Wizard will open follow the steps

• Place card stock in the hand feed port of your printer
• Follow the steps of the wizard selecting the Picture - the Printer - etc.
• Select the ‘13x18 cm cutout prints’ option by clicking on that option
• The picture will print ready to be folded into a card.

Creating a Slide Show with Music in Picasa

You can combine photos from multiple folders into a single album in Picasa. Photos that you include in an album remain in their original folder locations on your computer, even if you reorganize or delete photos from the album. To create an album, you can follow these instructions:

1. Select the photos you wish to include in the album and put them in the Photo Tray in the lower-left corner of the window. (drag photo down to the Photo Tray)
2. Once all your selections are in the Photo Tray, click the Add Selected Items to an Album button on the Photo Tray.
3. Select New album. You can also choose to add the photos to an existing album in the menu.
4. In the 'Album Properties' window, name the album.
5. Click the OK button.

You can edit the properties of a folder or album using the following steps:

1. Select the folder or album you'd like to edit.
2. Click the Folder menu or the Album menu in Picasa.
3. Select Edit Description.
4. Make your edits. Please note the following:

* Date: You can manually choose a date that should be associated with the folder. Alternatively, Picasa can analyze the timestamp of your photos in the folder or album and determine a date for you if you select the 'Automatic Date' checkbox.

* Background music: Select the 'Use Music for Slideshow and Movie presentation' option if you want music to accompany the display of the photos in that particular folder or album, while in slideshow or movie mode. Click the Browse button and select the MP3 music file you'd like to use.
5. Click the OK button.

Other options -

Windows Picture and Fax Viewer presentation software can create slideshows - at the same time that Windows Media Player is playing music in the background

Other options - presentation software can create slideshows with music - three example:

• Microsoft - Powerpoint
• Open Office - Impress
• Corel WordPerfect - Presentations

Web based Slide shows - with images and music
http://www.smilebox.com
http://www.slideroll.com/

Windows Movie Maker - Windows XP or earlier

Windows Live Movie Maker – Windows Vista and Windows 7

Tutorials - Graphic Software

Tutorials are available for GIMP - the free image manipulation program, or graphic software. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

The tutorials are a good introduction to this powerful software.

Basic image manipulation is also possible with image storage and indexing software like Picasa. - which calls itself free photo editing software. There are also videos and tutorials on the use of Picasa.