Meet the Ambassadors: Adil Tuğyan, Turkey

Publication date: September 18, 2014

Over 70 EU Code Week Ambassadors from 34 countries are helping us spread the word about #codeEU throughout Europe. Who are they and why did they get involved in Code Week? We’ll be running a series of interviews and get to know them better. Our previous interviewee, Laurence Bricteux from France, interviewed Adil Tuğyan from Turkey.

Adil, who are you?

I am an expert English language teacher and teacher trainer, eTwinning Ambassador, eLearning Expert and Moderator as well as trainer, iTEC (Innovative Technologies for an Engaging Classroom ) Ambassador, ICT and Web 2.0 Tools in Education expert, creative music, drama, art and technology enthusiast, like traveling and exploring new places, geek, critical thinker, fun.

How does your country deal with this idea of code learning?

Unfortunately my country Turkey did not participate in the Code Week last year. As we live in the 21st Century and taking the changes in every field of our lives from education to future career opportunities into consideration as a visionary educator I thought it would be a  great idea to spread the word of EU Code Week in Turkey and as a fresh start, I wanted to work with interested teachers from different cities.

I took the advantage of Facebook to reach the teachers and to my surprise, in a short period of time with teachers who were interested in coding, we formed a Facebook group and created a Blog using the Code Week resources published on the Code Week webpage. The teachers studied the information presented for them and then they practised coding activities on Code.org . They started with One Hour Coding activity and then went on to work on K8 Intro to Computer Science Course. Most of the teachers completed these two courses and then they planned their Code Week activities. I am still with some of my colleagues, trying to get more teachers and schools to involve in the coding and the Code Week.

We have about 30 Code Week events and I believe this number will increase in the coming days. But if we had the support of the Ministry of National Education as an official partner of the EU Code Week events, I am sure there would be more teachers, events and schools today. Yet I am quite positive about the next year. With the support at the ministry level, the Code Week will be a national event rather than an individual initiative.

Why are you involved as an EU Code Week ambassador? What do you expect from it?

As a teacher, teacher trainer and project ambassador I have been using and teaching a great many softwares and ICT and 2.0 web tools at my classes and workshops and I have always wondered about the basic principals lying under the developing stage of a tool, software and also a game. I tried a few coding languages like HTML, XHTML, JavaScript and PHP but they were too complicated for me and I end up with nothing but little knowledge programmes and commands.

So I decided to get involved in Code Week as an EU Code Week Ambassador both to learn coding better to create my own educational apps and to have my students and the teachers at my school and teachers and students from other schools in my city as well as in Turkey involved in the event to learn to code for their professional development and future career and job opportunities. We all as Turkey Code Week team are more than glad to have had the opportunity to take part in this event.

Do you have a hero or someone that inspires you (can be a hacker or not)?

I have some people who I admire like Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau the inventors of World Wide Web. But frankly speaking, I admire everybody who invents and develops technology for the well-being of the human race and who makes life easier for us and enable us to be much more productive individuals.