NUN Schools held its first education summit on March 10, 2018, where it sought an answer to the question "What is beyond education?" At the summit where experts participated, issues such as digital transformation in education, artificial intelligence and differentiation were discussed. After the panel, twenty separate seminars and workshops were held.
The Beyond Education Summit, attended by five hundred people, was held at NUN Schools Beykoz campus. The program began with the keynote speech of Prof. Dr. Kemal Sayar. He said, “What kind of a world we leave to children is as important as what kind of children we leave to the world. Children should be subjects, not objects in their learning processes.” It continued with a panel where education was discussed from various aspects in Turkey and in the world.
One of the main topics of the summit was that it is necessary to know the age and today's children in order to determine the right methodology in education. In this context, Prof. Dr. Ayşen Gürcan focused on “New Generation in Education” and Gökhan Yücel, the president of the Digital Research Association, elaborated on discussions on “artificial intelligence” and the reflections of technological developments on education.
Prof. Dr. Belma Tuğrul drew attention to the importance of “game literacy” by saying, “When we pay a little attention to children's plays, we can reach their stories and from their stories to their families' stories.” In his speech on “Differencing in Education”, Asst. Prof. Tamer Ergin compared the differences between children to rivers: “If you direct the dispersed flow correctly, you can build a dam and generate energy. If you can't direct it, it will drag everything along.”
The last speaker of the panel, Alp Köksal, the director of Khan Academy Turkish, explained the formula for adapting to change by saying, "No change is possible that is not accepted by the teacher." “If we raise individuals who are lifelong learners, they don't just adapt to change, they start to manage that change.”
In the second half of the program, twenty different workshops and seminars were held simultaneously by NUN teachers. Participants took an active part in interesting workshops such as “Mom, I Became Youtuber!”, “STEM Practices with Mister Gepetto and Pinocchio”, “Twenty-first Century Teacher Skills”.