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Trinity Centre

By Christina Manolescu, Development Worker, Trinity Centre

Trinity is an extremely busy community centre, located near East Ham Underground Station in Manor Park. It hosts the activities of 65 regular user groups, including 14 adult ESOL, Literacy and Conversation classes, a Special Needs group, a youth group and a regular homework club.

All the above-mentioned groups have made good use of the laptop, scanner and printer since they arrived last year.

All ESOL students, a large proportion of whom are refugees or asylum seekers from many parts of the world, have been invited to bring in photographs, maps, or family photographs to be scanned. These have been assembled with their written and corrected stories and autobiographies and displayed on two large movable boards in the Day Centre. This display is very attractive and attracts the interest of not just the students themselves, but many other casual visitors and users as well.

For some students, this was the first time they had ever used a computer. They managed to learn how to use the keyboard commands, and watched a demonstration of the scanner with great interest and enthusiasm.

The second group that found the new facilities very useful were the 15 – 20 children attending the Homework Club. They very quickly got used to doing simple searches and print-outs of articles for their homework projects, using the Encarta Encyclopaedia. Many of them have become quite expert in inserting clipart and manipulating the Word Art feature in Microsoft Word. Their essay presentations were much improved and some students reported achieving higher grades as a result.

8 adults with special needs accessed the laptop to design a cover page for their class folder. This was a first experience for ALL these particular students. They all managed it successfully although, in some cases, impaired vision made the task very slow and painstaking. It was a particular triumph for them, nevertheless.

Another specific use was the provision of short, informal workshops for individual tutors based at Trinity Centre, as well as from nearby teaching sites. The object was to demonstrate the possible uses of multimedia/IT in language teaching. Various software products were demonstrated, among them, the Encarta Encyclopaedia, CD-ROM Wordbird for small children, Citizen of the World and The New Reading Disk, In House and In Health. So far, 7 tutors have made use of this service, which is on offer free of charge and by appointment.

In general, it must be said that the laptop is greatly appreciated by users and staff here at Trinity. Plans are continually evolving in response to enquiries and requests. For example, the laptop has just been booked, once a week, by a local Turkish family (a mother and her two children) who need to improve their English literacy.

Another possibility is to offer the services of a WRITING CLINIC. Ideally members of the public would be able to drop in and get help drafting letters and preparing their CVs on the new laptop computer. This is something we would like to try this year.

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