The importance of face to face communication and How an eTwinning project started between Scotland and Turkey?

In starting a project no matter what type it is, coming together; discussing the topic and the process makes it much more easier for both partners. Because you have the chance of knowing your partner well, asking many questions about his/her working conditions, school, pupils and you can measure their capability whether they can handle the topic or not. Moreover spending some time, at least two days, lets you build up a safe, reliable friendship that some thing like that exists in your mind "I have met a really hardworking and reliable partner whom I may easily plan and work on a project" It was just like that when I knew dearest Julia Preston during the eTwinning Bilateral Contact Seminar in İzmir/Turkey in October/2013. In such kind of seminars you are given the chance of talking someone else about your project topics, ideas and so on. I came along Mrs. Preston and mentioned about my project idea, kites. She really loved it and accept my offer to be the partner. Then, during and after the sessions we prepared a draft about methods and possible steps of our project. First, we have thought of organzing a kite festival at the same time in each country as a main event and searching for the history of kites will be the subevent. After turning back home we started to skype regularly at least one in each week to shape our schedule and planning. We got our pupils to searc on the history of kite and found out that it is a chinese invention. Then, Julia Preston having known that Chinese make their kites from Bamboo offered us to adopt Chinese Giant Pandas because of their needs of Bamboo. It was really a Fabulous idea and here in Turkey one of our pupils designed a money box which looks like a panda and then a campaign started alongside the school to collect the money for silver adoption package. Nearly one month period we got the money and sent it to Mrs Preston and she adopted the pandas in the names of us. Now we have the link with not just Scotland but also China. Besides, the Royal Zoo and Strathclyde University became  our participants and dear Sandy and Miss Meryl  offered us to make a collaborative lesson where she would able to thank us about adoption and also show some real items of endangered species icluding many games for celebrating the chinese new year. during that period we have designed three walls about the project, one for Chinese celebration, one for Giant Pandas and one for kites. Many more activities done during the process and many are going to be done in the following weeks. lets talk about the benefits of eTwinning; first and the most important one for me is that now my pupils loved to deal with english. they got the chance of practising, they are not able to speak enough but they saw the necessity of it. Moreover this has changed the monotonous atmosphere of the school. Now they totally understand that the school is not just a building that topics are learnt it is a place where they are socially active and where they have the chance of doing something special..please check out this link "great heights with eKites" http://new-twinspace.etwinning.net/web/p99055