Project meeting in Turkey

Our second project meeting took place in Muş, Turkey, in April 23-28, 2007.
We had a great time there. Atilla Gündeş, our host, together with his headmaster, Mr. Rahmetulah Yakti and their team, made our visit to Muş unforgettable. The program was very rich and interesting.
We had our technical meeting, when we discussed the details for the activities to be finished till the end of the first project year: the publishing of the book containing the collection of games, which will be done both in paper format and as an e-book on the project website, the upgrading of the website with the latest information and photos from the meeting and those with the toys the other children made; the updating of the project blog, etc.
The three project teams, from Poland, Romania and Turkey were met by the Education Authority from Muş and we had an interesting discussion about the educational systems from the three coutries.
During the Seminar organized by our hosts, the Socrates programmes were presented by the project coordinator from the Muş region, Mr. Ercan Mutlu, after which, the representatives from the three partners of project were requested to present their schools and the project "Junior Inventors". Mr. Rahmetullah Yakti, the Headmaster of the Turkish school, talked about the projects his school has been involved in. Then the Romanian school was presented by Ms. Daniela Buda, the Headmistress of the school. Mr. Michal Kulik, project coordinator, introduced the Polish school to the audience.
There was a large audience present at the seminar: many officials, headmasters of schools, pupils, teachers and parents attended it. On this occasion, the audience could admire the toys made by the children within the project.
The inter cultural exchanges between the 3 teams had several aspects: the beautiful dance show the children from the host school organized for the seminar, the fact that the visiting children were hosted by local families, which was an opportunity to compare different life styles. Another comparison item was the splendid Turkish cuisine, full of flavors and spices. Visiting the historical and cultural places offered us the occasion to talk about the common aspects throughout the history.
In Muş we visited the teachers' high school, very modern and well equipped, a kindergarten, and, of course, we visited the host school from KIRKÖY. This was a chance for headmasters to exchange experiences in running the schools.
When we visited the Turkish partner school, we met the local officials from the village, teachers and the pupils of the school, as well as the Turkish "junior inventors".
Another aspect of the inter cultural exchange was the linguistic one: by the end of the meeting, all people involved (pupils, teachers, host families) could say a few words and phrases in the four languages: English, as the communication language of the project, Turkish, Polish and Romanian. It was fun to hear people communicating, using words from the four languages.
There was also a methodological aspect of the meeting: the teachers of English from the schools from KIRKÖY and Muş gathered for a methodology workshop: the topic was "Using games in teaching English communicatively". The workshop was successful and the people gathered there decided to keep in touch in order to learn more active teaching/learning methods by exchanging such experience via the internet.
We enjoyed the visit to Turkey and made a lot of friends there.
So we think we achieved all our objectives for the first year of the project.
Next project meeting will take place in autumn in Poland, for the second year of the project.