ITRA E-NEWSLETTER Summer 2008 Helena Kling
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ITRA E-NEWSLETTER Summer 2008 Helena Kling. Editor. The consensus of the members of our association was that the Newsletter should be informal and aim at keeping us in contact with each other. I am including in this issue news and information about the upcoming conference so some items that were sent to me will be in the next issue. Our President Dr. Cleo Gougoulis and her team have put together an outstanding program. Their hard work is appreciated. The participants in the Congress will go home updated in knowledge in our field, pleased with meeting old friends, hopefully with new friends and with many memories of the good social time that is being planned. What hosts put on the table for their guests tells the story of who they are. That vegetarians will be catered for and meat eaters will be offered chicken and veal at the times of sustenance between lectures can only add to the comfort and enjoyment of the whole event. _______________________________________________ In this issue New members Photo from Brian Sutton-Smith Remembering Birgitta Publications Recommendations from Members Upcoming Conferences Burn Ken Map of Nafplion Program of the Congress How to get to Nafplion Information on Membership _____________________________________________________________________ 1 Join me in welcoming new members. The writings of our new members would fill a bookcase and to list them would fill pages so please visit their websites or google them to get to know them better. Rather than quote academic titles wrongly, they and job descriptions are easy to glitch, I am introducing everyone by name only. Irina Filippova and Elena Smirnova are coming to the Congress from Moscow. You can meet them on the website www.psytoys.ru. It is a splendid site. Deborah Jaffe's website is www.deborahjaffe.net My eldest son gave me her book The History of Toys as a birthday present and I can recommend it to all of you. Stela Ferrarese is from Argentina. Do visit her site and look at the pictures. www.juegosetnicos.com.a Katriina (Kati) Heljakka from Finland has researched the design and development of board games and is interested in the capability of toys to create experiences as compared to works of art. Minna Ruckenstein is running a comparative research project organized by the University of Helsinki and Hebrew University titled: "Do toys matter? The production of Childhood and Citizenship in Comparative Perspective''. Lydia Plowman has participated in previous ITRA conferences and has now joined us as a member. www.ioe.stir.ac.uk/staff/plowman Kathy Merlock Jackson is from Virginia U.S.A. Besides teaching she is editor of The Journal of American Culture. Donovan Hohn is a writer famous for hunting Moby-Duck. He went around the world on a hunt for 28,800 bath toys that fell from a container ship in 1992. From Greece there are several new members who we look forward to meeting at the Congress. Artemis Stamatellou, the Director and Anna Alexandri the Public Relations Manager of the Hellenic Children's Museum. Joanna Hatzopoulou works at the Benaki Museum in the Childhood Years and Toy Department. Karadimitriou Konstantinos is at present in charge of designing educational programs for pre-school children at the National Historical Museum of Greece. Rena Sivropoulou is teaching at the Institute of Education of Florina University, Thesssaloniki and is interested in Play and Literacy. If you wish to become a member or would like to update your details then fill in the membership form which is at the end of the newsletter. Please note that at the last ITRA meeting in Alicante on August 8th 2005, it was decided that conference fees in the future will cover ITRA membership fees for three years. This means that conference participants who pay full registration fees for the conference in Nafplion Greece this year, 2008 will be exempted from paying ITRA dues for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010. * It is highly commendable and much appreciated that some members who are unable to attend the Congress have sent their membership fees without prompting. I hereby prompt those who have yet to do this. Information about the fee is at the end of the newsletter. 2 Brian Sutton Smith will be unable to attend the conference. Because Brian was, in 1954, the first ever Ph.D. in Educational Psychology in New Zealand, the Department has named their annual Best Research in Educational Psychology Award after him! It was on the occasion of the 2008 award ceremony that Brian visited New Zealand. Brian sent a photo for the Newsletter of his visit to the Island Bay primary school where he was a student in the 1930s. It is attached to the same e-mail that this newsletter came to you. ______________________________________________________________ Birgitta Almqvist will be remembered at a special session at the Congress. Dr. Waltraut Hartmann wrote this: My personal souvenirs of Birgitta I will always remember Birgitta as a lively and cheerful person and very enthusiastic about her work! Birgitta proposed me for the BRIO prize in 1995 because of my 5 years longitudinal empirical studies on "Play in Elementary School". Before that time we hardly knew each other personally. When she sent me her interesting book "Approaching the Culture of Toys in Swedish Child Care" I was inspired to start another longitudinal empirical investigation at Vienna University in child care centers in Austria and in South Tyrol. As these studies were influenced by her scientific work we had an intensive communication per mail and telephone. At last we presented our research together with the studies of Gilles Brougère, Tizuko Kishimoto and Vickii Jenvey at the ITRA Congress in London 2002. For me Birgitta was a very special friend and I spent many happy hours with her. We had so much fun together at the various ITRA congresses and also in Sweden, where my husband and me were invited in her home and met her sons Björn and Jan with their families. She took us to a lovely midsummer party in Sundsvall and we were dancing and singing together under the bright and clear sunshine of the northern summer. On the last day of the ITRA congress in Salzburg we hurried to Vienna the same day in order to attend a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. She was overwhelmed when she recognised the "Golden Hall" of the Vienna Musikverein, which she knew from the New Year Concerts broadcasted all over the world. The last years of her life Birgitta was worried about the future of ITRA, which really was her child and in which she invested very much energy as secretary from 1993 –2002. She got into contact with toy researchers from all parts of the world and the network she knitted for ITRA is really international. We all profited from the interesting people who presented their research at the ITRA Congresses and I think it would be in her very interest to carry on her work. There are so many precious souvenirs that I will never forget Birgitta! 3 ITRA members have publications by the score. Tell us about them. Let us show them in the next issue of the Newsletter. Information about some were sent for this issue. My apologies for not putting them in. _______________________________________________________________ Websites that have been recommended to us: Prof. Sudarshan Khanna has now included a short film (5 min) based on his experiences of toy workshops,research/teaching projects and books/designs in his website www.sudarshankhanna.com You may download the 3 books. The results of the contest challenging designers to design an object or a series of objects which contribute to the development of children's imagination and creativity are available on http://www.design21sdn.com/competitions/6 The feedback from the judges is excellent. I may be biased but I enjoyed reading Jean-Pierre Rossie's comments on the toys submitted more than I did the others. http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/toys.html http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/museum.html http://www.nativetech.org/games/index.php http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7460870.stm Of interest to those of you teaching skills to produce computer games http://www.ipaworld.org http://web.mit.edu/2.00b/www/index.html On the basis of visiting this site my seven year old grandson said that at last he knew what he wanted to do when he grows up – he is going to MIT to be a toy inventor! http://www.deepfun.com is Bernie de Koven's site – a place to funfully frequent. http://www.theplayethic.com/ideascontext.html has many recommendations to other sites. 4 Upcoming Conferences Theme Toys and Games in Toy Libraries Date 13th - 17th Oct 2008 Conference Venue: Paris, France Host by: Association des Ludotheques Francaises Calling for Papers Details in French, English & Spanish Email [email protected] Website www.alf-ludotheques.org Siegfried Zoels has information about the next UNESCO Creativity workshop "Toys for Children's Rehabilitation" Contact him at FÖRDERN DURCH SPIELMITTEL - SPIELZEUG FÜR BEHINDERTE KINDER e.V. Immanuelkirchstrasse 24, D - 10405 Berlin Tel.: +49-30-4 42 92 93 Fax: +49-30-44 35 92 14 Mail: [email protected] URL: www.spielmittel.de Just in case you have not received from any other source the following question that David Kuschner, President of TASP has posed then here it is. If a toy sits in the forest and no one ever plays with it, is it still a toy? An ideal subject for toy researchers to discuss at breakfast. _______________________________________________________________ 5 How many themes does this cartoon cover? There is a prize for the person who sends in the longest list.