April 
2010 
Our banner is courtesy of Meena Jain, Computer Society of India, Udaipur Chapter

U3A Udaipur & Computer Society of India celebrated CSI day on 6th March at Udaipur. A lecture on E learning in Rural areas was presented by Mr. Ashok Jain, and the full text in WORD format may be downloaded here.

Chief Guest was Prof. T.M. Dak Secretary General U3A. Welcome address was delivered by Mr. R.S. Dhakar Chairman CSI-Udaipur Chapter and member U3A.

From A K Malhotra, Secretary of Bhavana U3A Lucknow. BHAVANA's Annual convention was held at Lucknow on 21st March 2010 and the Guest of Honor was Mr. Tom Holloway, Secretary-General World U3A, who specially flew in to attend our convention and to give a multimedia presentation. A number of Senior Citizens were honoured and felicitated on the occasion and many schemes were launched for assistance to poor meritorious students and development of rural villages. A full report may be downloaded here

Next day on 22nd March, a Technology session was organized for Bhavana's members. Tom Holloway demonstrated and apprised participants of many tips and guidelines to make the use of computers easy and interesting. The session was very absorbing and educative.
At the Open Learning Initiative of Carnegie-Mellon University you can get free materials, activities and assessments for self-guided learning. These are mostly in Science and Technology. See http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/
Art/History Groups: The site by Professor Christopher Witcombe at http://witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHLinks.html is very well organised. It was recently selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for inclusion on EDSITEment as "one of the best online resources for education in the humanities." He is producing a series of podcasts called Art History in Just a Minute (through EwArt Productions; also available through iTunes).

Bookgroups: - http://www.bookgroup.info - is an independent site providing information for readers, book groups, reading groups and book clubs. We aim to provide a book lovers' community where you can find unaffiliated book reviews, literary news, interviews with distinguished authors and keep up to date with literary festivals and events.

Language Groups: New French and Spanish games are now available at http://www.bbcactivelanguages.com/LearningSupport.aspx
We have access to some new games for French and Spanish learners on the new Learning Support page on our website.

There are ten games in each language, each one focussing on a different topic. This page is to support you in your language learning. From this page you can access a range of fun, interactive language games so you can practise what you've learnt.

Some interesting figures that you should know:

In a country of 90 million (current estimate) older persons, 33% live below the poverty line, 90% are from the unorganized sector with no social security, and 73% are illiterate & dependent on physical labour.

For more information click on http://www.rajat.org.in/OLDAGEPERSON.html

Do you know someone who would like to receive this newsletter in future? Ask them to email info@u3aindia.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.