COMPUTATIONAL THINKING AS A BASIS FOR DIGITAL LITERACY AND COGNITIVE TRAINING OF THE ELDERLY
Elderly; cognitive training; Computational Thinking; Digital Literacy; digital game.
Brazil has been showing a growth trend regarding the elderly population due to the better health conditions that advancements in this area provide, resulting in better quality of life. In this sense, the population aging cast light on ways to enable elderly citizens to remain socially and economically independent whilst integrated to society. It is also noteworthy that during the aging process it is possible to have a reduction in cognitive performance, which causes performance difficulties related to common everyday tasks. Computational Thinking (CT) can be used for the cognitive development of the elderly, as it works with problem solving and can help memorization through unplugged activities. Focusing on this audience and realizing how digital technology can contribute to the development of activities to keep them active, this study relies on the CT to stimulate both cognition and the development of technological skills of the elderly, aiming to develop a process of cognitive training with Digital Literacy contents in a digital game. This research will be of an applied nature, with a qualitative approach, and its methodology will follow the Design Science Research (DSR), since there will be the development of a game with the proposed cognitive training, which will be validated by an instrument of Digital Educational Materials (MEDs) for mobile devices, aimed for older people. As expected results, we seek to deliver the digital game with cognitive training adapted to the elderly and, with that, their active participation so that they can train their cognition in the plugged activities, regardless of whether they are at home or not.