A virtual helping hand - Interview with Information Management/Law student Pradesha Puvanendiranathan
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Pradesha
Puvanendiranathan
Information Management/Law student Pradesha Puvanendiranathan admits to having a "little inner hippy" and says that at the very least, her Communications degree "taught me how to be organised."
Earlier this year, together with six other students Pradesha won the 2007 Malian Foundation Community Partnership Prize for a UTS Shopfront project in which she helped to develop the prototype for 'The Community Living Kit', a digital publication designed to assist people to move out of institutional settings and into their own homes.
Currently completing the tail end of her degree, Pradesha says that her studies in Information Management have equipped her with skills to help others in society, as well as an understanding of the world around and "a different way of looking at things."
"I started my degree straight out of high school so I chose Information Management and Law because there seemed to be quite a lot of things I could do with them at the end and I like to keep my options open."
Although initially doing Communications as a means "to balance out law", Pradesha Puvanendiranathan decided to inject her passion for helping others into her final project for Information Management.
Working with the community partner Community Connections Australia, Pradesha developed a computer program comprising of a "virtual learning environment" which helps people with disabilities manage everyday tasks which "generally people take for granted."
"I worked for a small community organisation who essentially develop educational programs for people with disabilities. It's about teaching them l guess life skills that generally people take for granted.
"So things like moving into your own home, how to entertain people, just essentially life skills to help people integrate into society and live a fulfilling, happy life. Up to this point they've had a series of books called 'The Community Living Kit' which consists of four books (based on transportation, employment, entertaining in a house and moving into a new house), with those modules used as a learning tool to teach people with disabilities."
"The major work I did for my professional project at the end of that degree was something I really got into. It had to do with organising information and material in a way that's accessible to various groups. The project was associated with people with disabilities. So it was looking at that target audience and going, 'Well, here are the things you need to address and here are the accessibility issues' and then going on and addressing those issues and coming up with a feasible information plan and sort of doing it that way."
Despite having very little previous IT experience, Pradesha honed in on skills she had acquired through her Information Management electives to help her conceptualise ideas into an appropriate format.
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