David Jones

Retired from Bell Canada in 1986after 36 years of service. BELL History: Central Office switching, Repair Technician, served on Government contract for Mid Canada Radar Defense Line teaching electronic theory and courses in Montreal on Radar and radio transmission. Promoted to 1st level Management and supervised 4 Radar station west of Fort McMurry in Alberta. Later promoted to 2nd Level Management Serving in Bell Ontario and Montreal HQ Staff Repair positions. Assigned Installation/Repair Manager of Special Services Toronto for Mobile Radio and Pocket Pagers. Later Appointed Repair Manager for South District Toronto which cover the area from the Toronto Island to Dundas Street between Jarvis and Spadina with a staff of 115 people. Later became Service Agreement Coordinator and conducted 5 day Repair Center audits in Provincial telephone companies from PEI to Alberta. The 5th day of the audit required preparing slide presentation to CEO’s, and upper management with recommendation for improving their Repair Service. In 1988, created a Sole Proprietorship, “DJ CONSULTECH SERVICE” and did contract work such as; Installed and Repaired FAX Machines, Voice Mail Desktop PC systems, Serviced large high resolution Mac Monitors used by Art designers and wrote engineer specifications for the removal of telephone equipment from small obsolete Rural switching centers..

Joined the McConaghy Seniors Centre Computer Club In 2002, founded by Jurij Nowickyj. Later elected Computer Club Chair and logged 187 hours of volunteer time in 2004 and 294 hours in 2005. These hours are conservative as many hours of working at home using E-mail, telephone calls and travel time were not logged.

Awarded 5 years of Volunteer Certificates or Appreciation, presented with handshakes from Richmond Hill Mayors, Bill Bell and Dave Barrow between 2004 & 2008.

The McConaghy Seniors Center Computer Club that time, offered a “Drop-In” 2nd floor training room for seniors to use for playing computer games, writing letters, searching the Internet and sending/receiving e-mails.

The 2nd floor training room also is used for computer training classes for Seniors 55+.

In addition, Free Saturday Forums were conducted twice a month on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays at 10 AM to assist seniors with computer problems, answer questions and to view computer projected topics for discussion and learning.

I was available most Monday to Fridays in the 2nd floor training room working on course materials or updating and repairing the computers, printers and Network. While there,. I offered my assistance to anyone who dropped by. As people came with curiosity and questions I sat down with them as one senior to another and encouraged them to learn the very basics. I suggested they attend a Forum on the 1st or 3rd Saturday, as a stepping stone to later enroll in beginner courses.

As Computer Club Chair, I performed the following activities during my Term:

• Attended monthly Council Meetings and submitted Computer Club Reports.

• Assisted in writing Beginners and Intermediate Computer courses and in the development of a Novice course. Copies of the courses were given to students for homework on their computers.

• Appointed and assigned Instructors resulting in an increase in computer classes from seven in 2003 to twenty-one in 2005. Also chairs periodic Instructors meetings to assign classes

• Assisted in modifying the computer courses, so that a senior without any computer or computer experience could start with a Novice course and progress via Beginners and Intermediate courses to learn how to send and receive e-mails to and from relatives and friends.

• Coordinated an Annual Open House in September to advertise the Computer Club activities and to encourage enrollment in future training courses.

• Purchased new PC’s to replace older units and assisted configuring them to Lab settings.

• Created notices for Computer Forums and Computer Lab procedures and guidelines.

• Redesigned the computer Lab and assisted assembly of 10 new computer desks to create a classroom arrangement for an improved teaching environment.

• Upgraded to new Optical Mice to assist with manual skills and added larger 17 inch monitors.

• Created a portable computer cart with a projector to aid in classroom teaching as well as in the Saturday Forum demonstrations.

• Periodically conducted Saturday Forums and assisted with 15 minute hands-on training sessions in the Computer Lab.

Many of the above items have increased the use of the Computer Lab by 130% during this time, due to the increase in training courses and the improved reliability of the computer equipment.

When my Term ended, Clara Griffel was appointed Chair and I became a Sitting Member of the McConaghy Seniors Council as a Computer Club consultant.

Unfortunately, the later years were hampered by vision loss caused by Macular Degeneration which limited me teaching computer courses. However, with Assistive Devices such as ZoomText and more recently “Google Hangout,” enables my participation at Saturday sessions via Virtual connection from home.