International Day of Older Persons

This week, we have celebrated the International Day of Older Persons which is on the 1st of October each year. The purpose of the day is to raise awareness about the issues affecting older persons. It also provides an opportunity to acknowledge the achievements of elderly people. This year’s theme is Digital Equity for All Ages.

In keeping with this theme, our residents gathered for a group discussion with a twist. Paired up into teams of two, we held a poll and quiz via a digital entertainment platform, Kahoot. Each team used a tablet or computer to participate. We explored our resident’s attitude towards digital technology and held a trivia competition with technology focused questions. Kahoot allows its users to select from colour coded multi-choice answers and keeps score.

This proved to be an entertaining and interesting way of getting everyone involved in the discussion. For those of our residents who are more hesitant when it comes to computer, it provided a gentle and straight forward introduction to their tablets.

The second part of the activity brought another surprise for our residents. We started a Zoom session with a research team from the Swinburne University. Some of our residents from the Retirement Village joined in the call as well as they have been practicing how to use Zoom.

The research team is led by Sonja who is a professor at Swinburne University. Her team, Diego and Mia, introduced themselves as well. All three of them are going to start researching technology in aged care settings soon and they will work closely together with our residents. In the Zoom session, they shared a few things about their recent projects with us. This included a robot called Kira. We have also had a look at bird life webcam as well as voted for Australian bird of the year.

It was a great to see our residents engaging with modern technology. For most of them, it was also the first time using a tablet or participating in a Zoom meeting. We plan to continue to empower our residents in learning about and in using modern technology.