Issue number one hundred and twentyseven (July 2011) in a series of Signposts from the WorldU3A Service, sent once a month to U3A members anywhere in the world.

Please send snippets of possible interest to the editor, Tom Holloway.
Feel free to copy any or all of this information in your newsletters.

History groups: Hundreds of useful references can be found in http://www.livius.org/catalogue.html and http://www.roman-britain.org/

The U3A Thames Valley Network Riverside Project is an ambitious project that is focused on the River Thames and its environs from the source to Windsor. It is a Network Collaborative Project culminating in a Study School in Wellington College in October 2011.

Throughout 2010 and 2011, member U3As have been invited to organise and join activities that experience and study the river and riverside. Such activities may include walking, nature study, photography, art and industrial, economic and local history

Click here For the "Riverside Revealed" Residential event at Wellington College 26th - 28th October 2011
All Groups: We've featured TED before - a wonderful source of ideas that can be used to kick off a discussion. And now many of them have been gathered into 'themes' to make searching easier. To see more click on http://www.ted.com/themes/list . (Thank you Maggie Roberts - Shoreham & Southwick U3A)
You can download interesting videos from YOUTUBE onto a laptop or a 'memory stick' quite easily with a free program like Replay Media Catcher and then play them back to a group whenever and as often as you like.

Natural History Groups: The Woodland Trust was set up in 1972 and its purpose is to champion native woods and trees. It aims to enable the creation of more native woods and places rich in trees and their wildlife.

It provides a list of hundreds of free downloadable worksheets on their splendid website. Amont its many projects are:-

WoodWatch: An exciting new campaign to enable and empower local communities to take effective action and save ancient woods in their neighbourhood.

Ancient Tree Hunt: A project with aims to record the location of around 100,000 ancient trees across the UK.
Why not become a Digital Champion? If you can read this then you are probably in a position to help a friend get online and get more out of the Internet - especially valuable if they are isolated for one reason or another.
Two lists comprise courses currently on offer by U3AOL in Australia and by The Third Age Trust (TAT) in UK. Once you have registered and become a member of U3A Online, you can enrol in any of the U3AOL courses through the U3A Online website.

To enrol in the TAT courses you will need to go to The Third Age Trust to apply and pay for membership before enrolling in their courses.

You can write and publish a book about (A) Your local U3A Group, or (B) Your local community , or even (C) Your lifetime experiences. Self-publishing is the answer and at the BLURB website you can find plenty of advice as well as a bookmaking-on-demand service.

Computer Groups: A set of Bob Rankin's tips, courtesy of Rick Swindell's GEMS Newsletter.

"I now have four unwanted toolbars on my browser! In addition to cluttering up my screen,
I'm getting 'adult' popups, and it also messes up my searching.” http://tinyurl.com/3k62hf2

"QR" or "Quick Response" are "barcodes" that look like patches of square, black and white
pixels? Understand QR codes, and what you can do with them. http://tinyurl.com/42ed6o2

Someday you'll start your computer and see a hard disk failure message. Tips, tools and techniques that may bring the drive back to life or at least help you recover some of your important data. http://tinyurl.com/3ehaaml

Do you know someone who would like to receive this newsletter in future? Ask them to email tom@worldu3a.org with a request and they will be put on the list. This webpage may be printed onto both sides of an A4 page and distributed to those with no Internet.