addington.net
addington.net On The Road To The Future
Addington.net was created in 2001 in response to the ever increasing necessity for people, both from Addington and the wider community of Christchurch, to use computers in both their daily lives and in their jobs.
Addington.net is situated opposite the Sallies in Addingtown Mall. Young and old use it for it’s free clubs, internet, printing photocopying, faxing, CV preparation, job applications, training, timebanking and much more.
Addington.net was created in response to the ever-increasing necessity for people to use computers in both their daily lives and in their jobs.
CPIT was associated with addington.net for many years until 2011 with their Computing for Free courses. They moved to their own premises and a hole had to be filled.
In October 2011 the free addnet-team learning group was born. It is growing into a friendly, welcoming learning community where volunteers and staff share their knowledge with people and each other so everyone grows in competence. Greg, Steve, Marilyn and Elaine are eager to show everyone that learning is fun and they do have fun. Fun with Reita who was singing beautifully to the songs she was collecting. Rod was having fun while he created a book online, from his holiday photos with help from Elaine.
Addington.net also likes their community to be creative and started Addington writers where people can write their life story or maybe some poetry or short stories.
Last year the focus was on the youth in the community. In New Zealand there is a shortage of people with certain skills, e.g. programming and film animation. Greg Marja and Blair show young people how much fun it is to code your own game or to design a house with Google Sketch Up - some future stars might be created.
Youngsters develop skills on Thursdays in the IT Kids Club for 7 to 12 year olds, or on Wednesdays in Addington Digital for 12 till 18 year olds. The sessions are held from 3.30 to 5.30 pm and during these times the centre will be closed to the public.
The newest additions for the Club are two robots, called Scribblers. The Scribblers come with special software for young people to enable them to program the robots to draw, have a race or put on a light show.
In 2013/14 we hope to host the Computer Science Club here, in collaboration with the University of Canterbury.
Number one on the wish list of addington.net for the future is upgrading our internet connection to Ultrafast Broadband with fibre optic cable. The cable was laid on Lincoln Road in November. This will especially improve the quality of tuition to the young people.
Staff, volunteers and the children are continuously upgrading their knowledge. If anybody in Addington has skills in the areas of video/audio, 3-D design or graphic design and would like to share them with the young people, please get in touch. You can use the Addington Timebank to receive time credits for which you can get someone else’s services in return.
In the future addington.net would also like to have people from the community being involved in addington.net with creative projects like digital art, photography, video, etc. Anybody who is interested in developing project ideas can contact us on Ph: 9627244 or email: info@addington.net.nz.
