IŞIKKENT EĞİTİM KAMPUSÜ
4th EARLY CHILDHOOD CONFERENCE
With a strong commitment to the improvement of the quality of education in Turkey, the Işıkkent School organizes professional development opportunities for teachers of various backgrounds e.g. kindergarten, elementary, middle, high schools and university academicians.
Held in 2005, the subject of the first conference was the Reggio Emilia approach which sparked a huge interest in education circles at the time. As part of the activity, two specialists who came from the Reggio Emilia School itself introduced the philosophy, approaches and methods of this particular school of thought to Turkish educators. By the same token, a mobile Reggio Emilia exhibition entitled the “100 Languages of a Child” opened at the Konak Pier Shopping Mall under the supervision of our school. The exhibition drew a big crowd of people who came to enjoy beautiful drawings painted by children, exhibiting the style and philosophy of Reggio Emilia.
The second conference held in 2006 was entitled the “Project Approach”. For this conference, we hosted the founders of the project approach Prof. Lillian Katz and Prof. Sylvia Chard who shared the main tenets of project-based education with their Turkish counterparts and provided a suite of useful hands-on workshops.
During the third conference entitled the “Importance of Playing and Games in Child Development” academicians Prof. Artin Göncü of the University of Chicago and Prof. Müzeyyen Sevinç of Marmara University talked about how and why play time and games are important for healthy child development.
All three conferences were attended by nearly 1000 early childhood educators who have stated that they greatly benefited by the presentations as well as hand on workshops.
This year, we had the pleasure of organizing the 4th Early Childhood Conference entitled “Humor in Education”. on Saturday, March 2007. The conference provided concrete ways to using humor as a learning aid as well as offering a lasting, creative, and fun learning experience to an audience of nearly 250 educators.
We had the opportunity to host some acknowledged key-note speakers this year. Having completed a degree in early childhood education, Mary Kay Morrison has been intensively working in the field of humor and its classroom applications. Ms. Morrison specializes in seminars and workshops with a particular reference to the relationship between humor and learning. In her book entitled “Using Humor to Maximize Learning”, Mary Kay Morrison describes how to create an optimum learning environment in the classroom using humor. Ms. Morrison is presently working in a self-established firm “Humor Quest” as an author, trainer, conference speaker, and counselor, and carries on with her efforts to convince people to use humor to increase their quality of life.
Dr. Sema Süvarioğlu, founder and manager of the firm called “Compass Education and Counseling”, has a master’s degree in the clinical psychology and a Ph.D. in the field of organizational behavior. In addition to giving lectures in Marmara, Koç and Boğaziçi Universities, Dr. Süvarioğlu provides training and counseling services to corporations and organizations. Dr. Sema Süvarioğlu has published numerous articles on humor and creativity including her thesis which was on creative problem solving.
The third speaker İrfan Sayar is a graduate of the Decorative Arts Department of the Stage and Visual Arts Faculty of the Fine Arts Academy. Making his fame with the popular cartoon character Prof. Zihni Sinir who gained wide spread popularity with his seemingly practical but useless gadgets, Mr. Sayar has been involved at the foundation stage of many comic magazines including Gır Gır and Hıbır. Mr Sayar, contributed to the session with his humor-packed conversation. Originally on display in Anadolu University, the conference featured part of an art exhibition called “The Museum of Educational Cartoons” including some of Mr. Sayar’s master pieces.
The conference created an opportunity for the participants to discuss issues such as how to create an optimum learning environment in the classroom using humor; contribution of humor on body/mind balance; how humor triggers brain power and creativity, impacts on positive communication, attention and memory, and supports development
The Conference which was organized with the hope that it would contribute to the professional development of potential teachers, teachers and academicians coming from various schools and universities of Turkey and to the value of the national early childhood education by and large has also aimed at teaching children to use humor in their studies and to increase quality of their lives.
