We are Hackney Silver Surfers and The Lawns is our main centre. We provide free computer training and free Internet access to everybody over 50 in Hackney. We are open Tuesday to Friday, 10 am to 4.30 pm (and also on Mondays for special projects). Everything we do is free, informal and very friendly. All you have to do is come along and ring the door bell. Our address is 52 The Lawns, Matthias Rd, London, N16 8QD. Our phone number is 020 7254 2183.
More information.
Please look at the About us page. Our contact details (with links to maps) are on the Contact us page. Information about what we do is on the Program page.
How to use this website.
It’s all explained in our post entitled How to use this website. But if you are not 100% sure — please ask a helper!
By the way.
Most of this page is underneath this post. Please scroll down to read everything. If you are not sure how to do that — please ask a helper!
We add new posts to the home page every week — sometimes every day. Keep scrolling down to make sure you have not missed anything!
If you see a link saying « Older posts at the bottom of the page, click on it — it will take you a second page of posts that are older but possibly still relevant.
Our level 1 course occupies most of our space on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.
When the course finishes (1.30 pm on Tuesday, 2.30 pm Wednesday), the whole of the teaching area is available for drop-in — so if you want to come here on Tuesday or Wednesday, come in the afternoon if you can.
The Agewell Computer Club is for Hackney residents who are between 50 and 65 and have little or no experience of computers or the Internet, but want to find out more. We also welcome other mid-lifers who have had a little experience, but who have been too busy to do much with it.
The Agewell Computer Club meets at The Lawns every Monday afternoon (2.30 - 5 pm). Mid-lifers (people in the 50-65 age range) are welcome to come to any sessions they have time for. As always, the front section of The Lawns is available for general drop-in by agewellers who prefer to do their own thing.
We are here to help you navigate your way through the great, yet demanding, experience of being a grandparent.
The BeGrand.net site provides information, advice and a welcoming community for grandparents. We have articles, factsheets, quizzes, surveys, resources, activities and helpful guides to making best use of the internet, written in plain English.
These sessions are for new learners. Friday afternoons, 2.00 - 4.30 pm.
5 February: MyGuide registration and introduction (for new learners, and others who would like to refresh their memory).
12 February: Using the web (workshop 1).
19 February: Learner support for people who have registered for MyGuide.
26 February: Using email (workshop 2).
5 March: Using online searches (workshop 3).
12 March: Learner support for people who have registered for MyGuide.
19 March: Using public services online (workshop 4).
26 March: Using email (workshop 5).
Reserve your workshop place.
You can reserve a place at the 5 workshops by asking Sadia, Michael or Rick — but please note that you should obtain a MyGuide username before you reserve.
There is no need to reserve places for the learner support sessions on 5 Feb, 19 Feb and 12 March.
HelpAge International, Age Concern and Help The Aged are supporting the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal to help older people affected by the earthquake in Haiti.
Here is our general program for January and February.
Hackney Silver Surfers Program at The Lawns.
Morning.
Afternoon.
Monday.
Personal Best (enrolled course), 10 am - 2 pm.
Agewell Computer Club. For mid-lifers (50-65). 2.30 - 5 pm.
Tuesday.
Level 1 Certificate IT User (enrolled course), 10.30 am - 1.30 pm.
New learners support, 1.30 - 4.30 pm.
Wednesday.
Level 1 Certificate IT User (enrolled course), 10.30 am - 2.30 pm.
Self-service drop-in, 2.30 - 4.30 pm.
Thursday.
New learner support, 10 am - 4.30 pm.
Friday.
New learner support, 10 am - 2 pm.
Workshop, 2 - 4.30 pm.
Notes.
Personal Best (Monday morning) — for people enrolled on the course only (there is no drop-in while the course is in progress) » more about Personal Best.
Workshops (Fridays) — special topics, usually announced at least a week before they happen. We give priority to people who book in advance » more about these workshops.
Self-Service — open, unsupported drop-in in the teaching area.
Cover of the 'Which' publication: Make the most of the internet.
Free ‘Which’ download.
Race Online 2012 have provided a free download of the Which publication ‘Make the most of the Internet’ in PDF format. The document file size is not small (nearly 2 Mb) — so the download may be slow, but is worth waiting for.
Several people have asked how to find and play the Internet Radio stations we played at our end-of-year party (15 Dec 2009).
They are all ‘Shoutcast’ stations. Shoutcast is a very wonderful Internet project that helps to restore flagging faith in humanity — free software enabling almost anyone to set up an Internet Radio station without expensive equipment. There is more info on the Wikipedia Shoutcast page.
The easiest way to play Shoutcast stations is to use a web browser to open http://www.shoutcast.com/ (search for ‘Soukous’ to find the first two stations, or on ‘WBR’ to find the third).
A better way is to download and install ‘Winamp’ (a media player designed for Shoutcast) from http://www.winamp.com/. Winamp is very ugly to look at, but works well.
Before you try to install Winamp on your own computer, please read the notes on our Internet Radio page .
Screen shot of an email noticeboard displayed in Opera Mail.
Did you realise that you can get all the information here by email?
People who get our Email Noticeboard know everything that happens here almost as soon as we know ourselves. It’s by far the best and easiest way to keep in touch with all our activities and future plans. All you need is an email address! If you haven’t got an email address yet, just ask a helper at The Lawns (or anywhere else).
When you have an email account, send an email to hss@lawns.org.uk, saying you would like to be on the Email Noticeboard list. We send out the Email Noticeboard about 3 times each month. Each noticeboard contains two versions of the same message: a colourful version with images and a simpler plain text version for people with poor eyesight.
More than 600 people are on the Email Noticeboard list so far (December 2009), and they are the people who get first shot at everything we do. Please join us.
Just send us an email! That is all you have to do — so you might as well do it now!
