Willamette Apple Connection Vol3No4

WAeE Journal wac Volume 3 Number 4 es A Publication of the Willamette Apple Connection, Inc. (An Anole Il & Compatible User Education Group) July/ August 1989 AUGUST 17TH MEETING P.O. Box 7252 . Salem, OR 97303-0053 (503) 585-0811 THE LIBRARIAN'S CORNER By John Moore I'm working on the development of a “New Member's Disk” of utilities and would like to have some input from other members as to what should be included. So far | have included Larry's disk Cleaning program, a fast disk copy program, two automatic menus, Joe's Printer Preparer and a couple little programs that can be attached to any program to be able to return to the beginning or to a menu when you are at the end of a program. | have some other programs for personalizing disks but | don't really know whether these are something that beginners want. Come on guys, we were all beginners once. Stop and recall what you needed, or wanted, or would liked to have had in your collection and I'll see if | can include it on this disk. For those who are into Eamons games, Neal Feldman and his wife are giving our entire collection @ good check-out so maybe we won't have problems with defective games in the future. Our Print Shop graphics collection has grown a little bigger with the addition of the ApplEugene collection (27 sides}. As usual with collections like this, we get duplications but there is some real good, new material also. A Computist's Tour of New Zealand EDITOR'S NOTES By Bobbi Kirk We've got a new column this month! Kirk Gamble and Darrell Robertson have agreed to write a teacher's column on an alternate schedule. Kirk started the column this month so the next column will be done by Darrell. | would especially ke to thank them for doing the column because | know they have heavy schedules as well as reservations about doing the column. it's not easy finding a topic to write about or believing anyone will be interested in reading what you writel If you find any of the columns especially interesting, it would be nice to let the writers know. And if you have any comments or opinions you feel you could write about, I'd be glad to print them. Be brave! As more of us contribute to the journal it will become more and more interesting to all of us. And if there is anything | can do to make it easier for YOU to contribute an article or column, please let me know. CONTENTS Librarian's Comer Editor's Notes Teachers’ Column Reviews WILLAMETTE APPLE CONNECTION, Inc. P.O. Box 7252 Salem, Oregon 97303-0053 President Lawrence E. Tucker (503) 585-0811 Vice President Harry Haley (503) 371-3197 Secretary and Telecommunications System Operator Neal Laytan (503) 393-0263 Treasurer Mary Page (503) 838-5230 Director-at-Large and Head Librarian John Moore (503) 838-4966 Editors of the Journal Chuck & Bobbi Kirk (503) 838-2205 Salem Public Library Bulletin Board 588-6130 [300/1200 bps] 588-6081 [300/1200/2400 bps] WAC JOURNAL The WAC Journal is published bi-monthly. Authors should submit their articles in hard copy or mail a disk with the article written in ASCII text file form or Appleworks to the editors of the journal by the end of the month. The WAC Journal is an independent publication not affiliated or otherwise associated with or sponsored or sanctioned by Apple Computer, Inc. The opinions, statements, positions and views stated herein are those of the author(s) or publisher and are not intended to be the opinions, statements, positions or views of Apple Computer, Inc. MEETINGS - Regular Membership The Regular Membership Meeting is held on the third Thursday of the month, with a start time of 7:00 p.m.. The meeting is held on the Chemeketa Community College campus, in Building 2, Room 113. The general public ts invited to attend. MEETINGS - Board of Directors The Board of Directors Meeting is held on the first Thursday of the month, with a start time of 7:39 p.m. The meeting location will be announced at the prior Regular Memebership Meeting. QUICK CONNECT REPRINT Ail articles with "(QC)" at the end, are reprinted fromm the "Apple Computer User Group Connection” newsletter “Quick Connect", and are copyright (c) 1988 Apple Computer, Inc. REVIEWS AppleWorks 3.0 CLARIS has done it! The long awaited up-grade to AppleWorks is a done deed. All the reviews give it high marks and there seem to be many of the enhancements that users have indicated that they want to see, including a real TAB key and some more shortcut keys such as control-C for center justified and control-P for page break. Some Math and trigonometric key words along with business and new logic functions demonstrate the publisher's desire to reach all users. AppleWorks 3.0 has incorporated TimeQut's QuickSpell, rendering that program obsolescent, but it should prove to be a life saver for peopie like me who are known to use “original” spelling. On the down side, the program is memory hunary, making that memory card you have been procrastinating about, a real “necessity”. In a 128K fle, the desktop workspace is shrunk to a paltry 40K, but apparently the program will search out and use all available memory from nearly any type of memory card. The program occupies four 5 1/4" disks (or two 35s) and necessitates disk swapping not required with earlier versions. (Then there are some lucky souls about, who already have a hard disk.) An upgrade is available to registered owners of AppleWorks 1.3, 2.0 & 2.1 for $79.00. Contact Claris for further imformation at 1 (408) 987-7000. (ref. InCider, August ‘89} 44949004 The Graphic Exchange The Graphic Exchange is a program for the IIGS that lets you change any graphic from one format to another. It will even take Macintosh graphics and change them to any Apple !! formati Before getting this program i couldn't use graphics from one program in any other one. Now | tan take all the Print Shop graphics in the club's library and convert them into Print Shop GS graphics. | can also take graphics I've created with Paintworks Gold and use them with Publish It, the program | use to create this newsletter. And | can take the excellent graphics that come with Publish It! and put them into the Paintworks (Continued on page 3) TEACHERS® COLUMN By Kirk Gamble and Darrell Robertson The editor keeps hinting at having a teacher's column. She has Darrell Robertson and myself in mind as the teachers. My = main reservations about being a regular writer for WAC are: 1) each elementary school operates differently, and 2) | am just learning the basics myself. What can | share that everyone on the WAC mailing list hasn't surpassed already? | must admit that | like to write, especially at the computer. Perhaps some of you might find what is happening at two elementary schools informative and different from what you imagined. My teaching situation is quite different from Darrell's. Darrell teaches in Salem at the 3rd grade level. | teach in a country school east of Salem called Pratum. | have the 6th, 7th and 8th grade in my classroom. if you go to another country school or another Salem elementary school, you would find that computer education depends on things like: who is on staff that knows anything about computers? Does the principal push for computer education? Will the school board or principal spend the money for computer education and how much? Do you have an interested and active parent fundraiser group? And who decides what is important to teach students about computers? Bobbi suggested sharing with you what teachers do during the summer to get ready for the fall. The main task for me is to learn as much or more than my students. | have been functioning below that standard for two years and am presently matching their Capabilities most of the time. | purchased an Apple IIGS in September just to be better equipped for teaching, and because | had a 10 year old daughter in the house. This spring | asked the school board to purchase another computer. We have one Apple {le in the school which the parent club purchased some years ago. This might not seem like much, out since we have oniy 35 students at Pratum, each student would have about 30 minutes to 1 hour of computer time eacn week. This equals other elementary schools |'ve heard about. There are programs my students at 6th-8th could be doing if | could increase their computer time. There are also more sophisticated activities we could do if we could move above the Apple lle's capabilities. To my pleasant surprise, the school board budgeted $1,500 for a new computer. It's nice to have support at the school board level and a willingness to find money in a tight budget. The first part of this summer is being used to research a computer purchase. How | wish | knew more about computers! Do | get the Apple 1iGS but without a printer, because $1,500 wouldn't be enough? Do | get the Laser 128EX or will | find it limited in the future? Is the Apple lle enhanced version sufficient enough? if you have an opinion, please share it. Darrell and | have promised each other to take time this summer to work on our Apple IIGS's. We want to become more knowledgeable, like many of you at the WAC meetings. Wouldn't it be nice to understand everything that is being said at those meetings? | also want to review programs that are at my school. Perhaps | will work on a catalog of what we presently have, although | know that might be a bigger task than | have the time for. That's what's going on with one teacher this summer. Bobbi, is this really worth putting into print? | have a third reservation though. This writing takes time. By Kirk Gamble Reviews (Continued from page 2) Gold program and color them or change them in any way | like and then convert them back into Publish It! graphics. The Graphic Exchange works with all the different resolutions the GS is capable of plus both types of Print Shop graphics, the Newsroom clip and photo formats and Macpaint graphics. If you use several different graphics programs this super program is for you. The documentation provided with the program is only 34 pages long but it is well written and organized and | found both the program and book very easy to use. « USER GROUP Willamette Apple Connection, Inc. —_ P.O. Box 7252 Salem, Oregon 97303-0053