CAS Creativity and Action - TOK Conference

At 4^th, 5^th and 6^th November, I attended to “The 15^th Annual International Students’ TOK Youth and Culture Conference” in my school, Eyüboğlu which they’ve been organizing this event with only University of Maastricht in the world. This year’s theme was “What is real?” IB2 students performed their TOK presentations in accordance with what topic they have chosen. As well as this TOK conference was instructive in order to prepare us for next year by listening our experienced TOK teachers, it also integrate us with students from other schools by offering us various kinds of creativity and action experiences. We taught our music, art and dance cultures to students from other countries.

First of all, according to our traditions, we believe that people will definitely like everything that we taught. Therefore, in school with professionals, we try to show the key points of the Turkish dance, “Damat Halayı.” Then, one of the important art techniques of Turkish culture, Ebru is showed to students. Every people creates unique designs, like they are professionals. And then, the last of all, music culture which we select to teach rhythm and percussion is executed with all the school community.

As you would appreciate, trying to teach different things to foreign people is difficult from our perspective, and trying to learn is difficult in their perspective. Therefore, we naturally develop our skill of teaching. I know that my weak side is music, whereas I’m strong in terms of drawing, which means I even develop my ability to play music instruments in sync with others. Also, it’s the second time that I’m learning rhythm and percussion. 

Both artworks and dance movements aren’t suitable for working individually, these are for working collaboratively, because the dance is played with the group and when art pieces are combined, the whole picture is seen. It has some benefits to work collaboratively such as if one of us couldn’t make it, the others can help. Also, while playing with the music instruments, like an orchestra, the whole sound is heard.

Some challenges like communication problems while dancing and making music doesn’t even affect our enthusiasm. Because the activities were so entertaining that we all participated. I thought of if every group of people showed their country’s culture we would have learned better.

We showed commitment by coming to school for 3 days and attending to every session. Before the conference some pre-presentations are shown to us in order to inform us, so this was a 1-week progress.

At the end, my first TOK conference is united with one of my CAS experiences and I enjoyed a lot.