Mucit Park

My name is Ali Necip Nursoy, mechanical engineer and MucitPark general coordinator. ‘MucitPark’ (‘InventorPark’) is a joint project carried out by the Eastern Anatolian Project Regional Development Administration and Erzurum Technical University. In the Science Festival held in 2015, we realised that students were most interested in the robotic coding stands. There was a keen interest, but a great shortage of knowledge. This is because, no institution provided education for children and young people in the field of robotics coding. Another deficiency is that many applications for TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) projects are made from our region but, be it for production or technical reasons, the deficiencies in coding meant that success in the finals in Ankara evaded us. A study was conducted to eliminate these two deficiencies. In addition to this, another parameter was observed. One of the biggest shortcomings of the students in this region is their social development. In order to overcome the shortcomings in social development, a separate workshop called Social Innovation was established. Mucitpark, which consists of about 16 units has been one of Turkey's most comprehensive educational workshops. We have provided training in workshops such as the Robotic Coding Workshop, the Social Innovation Workshop, the Science Workshop, the Wood Workshop, the Virtual Reality Workshop, the Computer Games Production Workshop, the Aviation Workshop, the ‘Maker’ Workshop, and the ‘IStem’ Workshop. Our aim is to provide 21st century teaching to all students from the first grade to university level. The Eastern Anatolia Project Regional Development Administration has now completely withdrawn from the Mucitpark Project after financing it and it has been transferred completely to Erzurum Technical University. MucitPark has four basic elements which I want to outline. The first element is education, i.e., technical training. The second main element is social education. Within the scope of this, we create environments where individuals can make presentations, using rhetoric, self-confidence and teamwork in the manner of ‘speakers’ corner’. We strive to help each age group overcome these problems. At the same time, university students voluntarily offer education to many student groups from first year students at primary school to high school senior students. In other words, our university students work voluntarily to learn and to teach, also learning how to teach. In addition, we provide support in terms of mentoring, materials and finances to all students participating in national and international competitions.