This page seeks to explain the more interactive aspects of this site, starting with the most recently added features and options
The main menu at left now has a extra, new button - "Email Us". To send us at SNEB questions, enquiries, information of interest or helpful comments, just click on that new button (from any page on the site). A pre-addressed email will pop-up and away you go!
Copies of your email will go to our Chairman, Secretary, Course Manager, Membership Manager and Webmaster, so you're bound to reach the right person! Of course, you can also continue to use "Enrol Me" for that same purpose but we recognise that the latter is perhaps a bit complicated. In fact, there are further moves afoot to separate out the many different parts of Enrol Me into several smaller and simpler ones.
At the top of the home page of the site, you should see a blue coloured link entitled "Log In".
Click on this ONLY IF:
* You are a Current or Possible/Provisional Member,
* You know your Membership Number (see your current Membership Card - we've also been including it in recent Contact Us/Enrol Me responses) and
* You have an email address (= the one you've been including in Contact Us/Enrol Me = the one we have in our records)
When you click, you'll see the new SNEB Login page. It invites you to enter your Identity and Password:
* Your SNEB Identity will be your first name in lower case, then an underscore, then your membership number. So, if your first name was Kerry and your SNEB Membership Number was 747, your SNEB Identity would be kerry_747
* Your SNEB Password has been temporaily set at your email address.
Note that the form has two more tick boxes, including one for Autologin:
* DON'T tick this if you are NOT sitting at your "usual" computer.
* DO tick it if you are and want to be automatically logged back into SNEB whenever you revisit. It will (attempt to) place a friendly "autologin" cookie in your browser.
Once you have sucessfully entered your Identity and Password and clicked on the Submit button, you should find yourself back on the Home Page again. This time you will see two links. The first will say "Kerry's Details" (or whoever you are!). Click on that link and you'll see your own contact details and enrolment and waiting list status. Take the opportunity to update or correct your contact details AND change your password into something harder to guess!
Also, once you are logged in, you'll find Enrol Me (fomerly Contact Us) much simpler to use (we really need to rename the latter as "Enrol Me" don't you think?).
* The second link at the top of the Home Page will say "Log Out". It will both log you out AND remove any autologin cookie. That can be handy if you are not using your usual computer. However, if it IS your usual computer and you DO want to be automatically logged in the next time you visit this site, DON"T click the Log Out button. On the contary, make sure you have selected the autologin option (and saved the changes) in your Details page.
** All the above software is brand new and may well have a bug or two. If you find a problem or have other feedback, just get back to us anytime by using the (equally new) Email Us button as explained above.
It’s amazing. Our on-line course enrolment process developed this year is a stunning example of how volunteer dedication, a fair amount of computer experience and need to save time can produce a model system.
It starts with our website – arguably the best SeniorNet website in New Zealand (bias is forgivable) – which Wayne Power has quietly been working on for four or five years. If he’d kept a timesheet the time so far spent continual tweaking the site would represent a ginormous chunk of his life since he became our webmaster.
As he plugged on, another dedicated member, Sue La Roche, was spending a heap more time trying to win the paper war and exemplify time management.. If that wasn’t enough, at the beginning of this year she introduced a radically revised curriculum aimed at showing new computer users how simple it is to send and receive an email and surf the internet. While picking up that knowledge they also absorb the basics of other computer techniques. Sue, already a regular tutor, had added that work to another role as course organiser with responsibility for scheduling courses at times to suit both tutors and members. People who’d gone before her knew what a nightmare that job could be.
Surely 21st century desktop technology could turn that nightmare into dream run. Sue talked to Wayne. Wayne pondered. They experimented.
A pretty good online process was introduced about February or early March. Fine-tuning continued.
Now, between Sue and Wayne, we have a course management system that shows how quickly and easily technology takes care of a process not so long ago absorbing hours of time and the attention of many people.
Sue uses Excel to handle a screed of information: member interest in one or more courses, scheduled dates, tutor availability, members’ computer operating systems (use of Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 often determines course dates and times), waiting lists and expressions of interest in a forthcoming course.
Wayne, with the benefit of cyberspace knowhow built up over a period of time, recognised how to achieve Sue’s aim to put all that Excel material online so that relevant information could be instantly dispatched to the people involved in a specific course enrolment. His days become dominated by a goal which he now wholeheartedly shared. At the same time, he continued that tweaking of the website, achieving constant improvements.
So how do you enrol online in a course?
With the SeniorNet Eastern Bays website home page open click on the Enrol Me button. You’re then led through the steps to enrolment. Once the “send” button is pressed that amazing electronic process begins.
If you haven’t already tried it, have a play. Just follow the advice showing on the screen in front of you.
