Media Release
Udupi, Apr 5: The department of Occupational Therapy from Manipal College of Health Professions (MCHP) along with Udupi Senior Citizens' Association hosted a teaching-learning session ‘Smart Seniors for a Smart Nation: Ready Tech Go’ on April 3 at Ajjarkad Park.
This programme was conducted in response to concerns voiced by the senior citizens of Udupi during the 2018 Walkathon for disability awareness conducted by the OT department of MCHP along with the USCAR.
The programme targeted senior citizens aged 60 and above and focussed mainly on the usage of smart phones and certain applications related to money management, shopping, health management and communication such as online payment applications like Gpay and PayTM, shopping applications including Amazon, as well as Bigbasket for groceries, health applications to monitor vitals and medication, operation of common social media/communication applications such as Whatsapp were instructed upon. Apart from the above, procurement and selection of applications using Google Playstore as well as operation of basic settings on individual Smartphones such as language, font, brightness, accessibility options for the visually impaired, voice to text settings and many other skills were taught to the participants.
The programme consisted of group and individual sessions where the participants were taught how to access and use various applications and phone operations by breaking them into their component steps followed by trial activities where the senior citizens had to apply their newly acquired skills in order to operate them efficiently so as to enhance their independence in the virtual world.
The programme was attended by the president of USCAR C S Rao as well as the members of the association and was led by Asish Das, faculty coordinator from the department of Occupational Therapy, Manipal along with the students from the department of Occupational Therapy, MCHP.The programme was said to be quite beneficial by the participants and the overall response from the participants was a positive one. The targeted population found the program helpful and relevant, thus addressing their concerns.