Forget about keyboards, wordprocessors and printers for a few minutes. Here are, possibly, some new pieces of equipment you haven't heard of previously: carbon paper, typing paper and typewriters.

In a previous age, those people who used a typewriter were called typists. Typists had strong fingers and were accustomed to loud a click-clack noise. The machine they used, the typewriter, produced typed characters on paper when the typist hit the appropriate keys. Sometimes the typist hit two keys at once and the machine locked up. On other occasions, typists mis-spelt a word and then the paper had to be removed from the typewriter and filed in a special place called "rubbish".

When the boss wanted more than one copy of a letter or document, the typist placed a special sheet called carbon paper between the original letter and a thinner piece of typing paper, ensuring the carbon paper had its carbon-coated side facing downwards. Thus a carbon copy was produced. If the typist had to produce a futher copy, another piece of carbon paper and typing paper was used. And the typist had to hit the keys even harder to ensure all characters were reproduced onto the third sheet of paper.

At the bottom of the letter or document, the typist would type Cc: with a list of those to whom a copy carbon had been sent to. A Bcc: list would only show the recipient's name and not others to whom the same letter or document had been sent.

Returning to the present, when sending an email to a number of people, the protocol is to put your own email address into the "To:" field and other addresses into the "Bcc:" field so that all your recipients only see their own address. Using this method, you don't reveal everybody's email address to others in the list and everybody's privacy is protected.

A quick look at prices will show you that some models of digital camcorders have decreased in cost to the same level as digital cameras and home movies have quickly become a possibility. Tie this in with the free video editing software installed with Windows ME and Windows XP, editing and producing video CDs and DVDs is now an attractive option.

Apart from the purchase of a digital camcorder, the only other piece of hardware your computer may require is what's called a Firewire card, costing about $40. A Firewire connection provides the high-speed channel between your camcorder and computer since video contains much more data than, say, a music track or photo. Most new computers contain both USB and Firewire connections these days but check, the USB being used for printers and digital cameras, among other things, such as wine coolers and personal fans.

Try to get the most out of your digital camcorder purchase. If you're coming from the days of the analogue camcorder, you'll want to convert your old tapes to digital format, copy them to your computer for editing, and then write them out to video CD or DVD. As well, some digital camcorders also enable you to take analogue recordings from VHS tapes and do the digital conversion on the way through to your computer.

Now that one computer at the Rushworth Community House has Firewire, webDotWiz can persuade those with a digital camcorder to provide some footage and hand out plenty of video editing homework. Next term there will be a couple of hands-on sessions on digital cameras and camcorders so keep an eye out for next term's course program.