We often share advice about how to make the most of your digital devices. This week, we’ll share some ways we use technology for supporting our own extracurricular activities.

When BTA guide and curriculum creator Jill Spencer isn’t working on new online courses or resources, she’s often in her gardens. She keeps her phone handy using its camera and an app, “Picture This” to identify plants she comes across. According to its creators, “Picture This” can identify over 1 million plants with 98% accuracy. It can diagnose what a plant might need from the image taken with the camera. Check it out at apps.apple.com/us/app/picturethis-plant-identifier/. Jill also records what her gardens look like and how they change from year to year in a picture journal. She collects inspirational garden design ideas from her visits to other gardens during her travels.

Jill enjoys crafting and uses screenshots to collect ideas and to order supplies for turning them into creations for herself and to share. When not gardening or crafting, Jill feeds her life-long interests in current events and history by reading books, and more books, plus several online subscriptions to newspapers, podcasts, blogs and video sites.

Jill volunteers with the Mid-Coast Retired Educators Association, providing technical support, advice and workshops to many of her teaching colleagues. This past winter she used Zoom, bringing participants together to learn about editing photos plus other digital skills to enhance their online experience.

Jill also uses the internet to find people who can fix things for her, like plumbing, roofing and tree removal.

Speaking of fixing things, BTA guide and founder Ed Brazee enjoys doing things around the house or camp. In addition to the usual technical queries, a short list of internet research on recent DIY items includes: how to repair a composite deck, fixing a hand-held vacuum and reviewing information about sharpening his chainsaw for its yearly use.

Ed travels internationally and used the internet for planning several of his family trips to Africa. Zoom meetings have been effective for communicating with his on-the-ground person in Zimbabwe while making all the plans for lodging, travel between sites and activities (walking game safaris, river cruises and more). He used Google Docs to share trip details with his adult children and grandkids (7, 8 and 10 year old) to include itineraries, appropriate safari clothes, cameras and binoculars, and most importantly, snacks, reading resources, movies and games for the 16-hour flight from Boston to Johannesburg, South Africa. Sounds like Ed could open a travel agency!

In addition to volunteering with local senior citizens groups and friends, Ed uses technology to facilitate communication for his church, such as keeping a schedule for various tasks — ushers, greeters, coffee hour caretakers and, yes, digital technicians.

When not working for BTA, making travel plans, fixing and organizing things, Ed uses his devices for staying current on political issues heading into November’s election (usually on his Mac) and reading for pleasure (often on his iPhone).

Like Ed and Jill, BTA guide Chris Toy enjoys reading. Since he is often in his car traveling to cooking gigs, he prefers audiobooks and has found several free sources for his listening enjoyment. One is the cloudLibrary app. It lets users sign out digital and audio library books statewide. More free audio books can be found online through long-running projects such as Project Gutenberg, which has published over 73,000 titles whose copyrights have expired. Check it out at gutenberg.org. Another source of free books is Librivox (librivox.org). He also subscribes to Audible for access to many audio versions of newer titles and best sellers. Most recently, he discovered that many classic and contemporary titles are available as audio recordings on YouTube, placed there by Gutenberg, Librivox and other sources.

Chris has other extracurricular activities that make use of the internet. Email and online calendars help to communicate, organize and teach cooking, outdoor guiding, arts and crafts classes with several adult education programs around the state. In addition to capturing images of food and art, Chris enjoys nature photography and uses his iPhone and the Photos app to capture, edit, create slideshows, and share wildlife and landscapes from around his home and during his travels.

Like his colleagues, Chris uses the internet to plan and arrange travel. From locating a fun place to escape to in the middle of a cold Maine winter to finding a good deal on a vehicle that can transport visiting family and friends to finding great restaurants and things to do while visiting, technology can add to those extracurricular activities outside of what we might consider work. Even if that work is fun and interesting with good friends.

BoomerTECH Adventures (boomertechadventures.com) helps boomers and older adults navigate the digital world with confidence and competence. Active boomers themselves, they use their backgrounds as teachers to support individuals and groups with online courses, articles, videos and presentations to organizations upon request.

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