Pelangi Publishing (Thailand) Co., Ltd. held Pelangi Forum 2024 to promote capabilities of personnel in the academic area on 16 November 2024 at Town in Town Hotel, Bangkok. On this occasion, Mr. Akarapol Wattanasin, Managing Director of Pelangi Publishing (Thailand) Co., Ltd., delivered an opening speech and watched the video of the company’s 20th year anniversary with participants.
The event began with the seminar under the topic of “Thriving Teachers, Empowered Futures” led bythe three guest speakers who discussed and shared their perspectives on education.
Mr. Suranit Jumsai Na Ayutthaya, Managing Director of EQ Plus Group Co., Ltd., Story Bowl Co., Ltd. and Dek Tid Peak Co., Ltd. launched his business with knowledge comics which later have widely gained recognition from young readers and confidence from parents. He thought that a good future was due to good ways of thinking, and media should play its part in cognitive development in children as they helped children keep finding out their potential and dare to think out of the box based on knowledge and cognitive process.
“What kind of future do we want to see? And how will children develop themselves in that future? As a media creator, we need to progress accordingly.”
Mr. Anuwat Takkachonchuchai, a teacher at Ban Huai Kook Border Patrol Police School, Wiang Kaen, Chiang Rai, has provided the opportunities in education for Hmong preschoolers by teaching them English. Mr. Anuwat refused to let the shortage of learning tools become his students’ obstacles in learning. He thus solved this problem by letting his students learn English from things around them. By doing so, they felt free to converse with their teacher and overcame their fear of the lessons.
“Some children are emotionally wounded from their upbringing and pushed out by their families. Schools must not push them out either. Giving children love can pull them back to schools.”
Asst. Prof. Dr. Porntip Siripatrachai, an independent scholar who has lots of teaching experience from primary to university levels, has done various research to develop teaching aids aimed at promoting creativity in children. She revealed that creative thinking, critical thinking and problem-solving skills were essential for children. For her, teaching did not only mean encouraging students to apply what they had learnt for today, but it must be useful in the future.
“Evey time we teach something to students; we need to think of their future too.”
The 1st seminar room: The topic of “Enhancing Professionalism”
Asst. Prof. Dr. Porntip provided knowledge on increasing efficiency to develop professionalism in teaching and encouraged the participants to do activities to enhance soft skills in AI literacy, critical thinking and creative problem solving through the ‘Mission to the Moon’ activity where the participants in each group had to accomplish the mission by planning how to solve problems together under the given conditions.
The 2nd seminar room: The topic of “Activities to Promote Executive Functions (EFs) for 7Q Excellence”
In the first session, Mr. Preeda Panyachand, a writer and illustrator who has an extensive experience in working with teachers and children, led the activity on how to make a storybook and asked the participants to create their own storybook by following his step-by-step instructions, as well as narrated storybooks with the content promoting EF skills. Mr. Preeda began the seminar by mentioning the 6 competencies that the teachers were already familiar with. He further explained that the first competency was self-management, and the second competency was higher-order thinking – both of which were what the scholars called ‘EFs’. Mr. Preeda revealed, “EFs can strengthen children’s minds. Once they have the strong mind from the inside, it won’t be broken and weak easily.”
For the last session, Khattiyada Chaiyo, Ed.D., an expert in early childhood education, led the participants to do some physical and thinking activities promoting EFs which helped develop all 7Qs of intelligence, including IQ, EQ, CQ, MQ, PQ, AQ, and SQ. Such activities could be applied to children in the classroom.
Pelangi Forum 2024 ended warmly with a lucky draw and group photos.
