Tale-telling met technology yesterday at two local schools.
Using a Web cam, microphone and the software program Skype, students in Nada Cuvalo's sixth-grade class at Kennedy Middle School read fairy tales inspired by Ann McNamara's third-grade class across town at Northeast Elementary School.
Kelly MacDougall, 12, made third-grader Shane Devlin a character in her story "Shane's Big Adventure."
"Shane was a peasant. He goes and takes the big job of saving Lady Bridget from the dragon, which no one else could do, but he eventually comes back with her," she said. "(The project) was really fun. I liked seeing the other students who we partnered with."
The older children recently sent surveys to the younger children through the mail. The surveys asked third-graders a series of questions of what kinds of settings, characters and plots they would like to see in fairy tales. Third-graders answered the surveys, teachers mailed them back and Cuvalo's class wrote individual stories for them.
Zach Boughner, 12, said he finished writing his 20-page story for third-grader Marc DeJulio on Wednesday night.
"At first, I didn't expect it to be so long, but I really liked Marc, he was kind of like how I am now," Boughner said. "I liked the fact that we got to see what third-graders are like. Truthfully, they are a lot different than we were when I was in third grade."
The project was the brainchild of Cuvalo and Sandra Malec, a technology specialist for the school district. Cuvalo said she tackled a similar project at a smaller school before becoming a Waltham teacher.
Malec suggested a meeting over the Internet, after overhearing Cuvalo speak about the project at Kennedy Middle School.
"We had never done anything like this before so we wanted to make sure it went smoothly," Malec said, who sat in on the conference at Northeast Elementary School. "The children were so enthusiastic about it. We were trying to explain to them what was going to happen and I don't think they knew what was going to happen until those sixth-graders came on the screen."
And the screen-to-screen rendezvous was achieved with Skype, which allows computer users to make telephone calls over the Internet.
"We're using Skype. It's going to be a little awkward," Cuvalo told her students. "Remember, it has a second delay, so that's why it's not very fluid."
Seconds later, both classes were eagerly waving to each other through television screens connected to laptop computers.
Cuvalo's class read excerpts from stories they wrote standing before a Web cam. A question-and-answer session followed, when both classes interacted for the first time.
McNamara said both teachers saw what each other looked like for the first time yesterday through Skype.
"This is the first time I'm collaborating with a teacher from a new school. It was a new experiment and it seemed fairly easy," McNamara said. "It was really a lot of fun."
Cuvalo said that the purpose of the project was to both infuse technology into her students' curriculum, but also to provide them with a literary audience.
"I want them to be excited about writing," she said. "I want them to think about writing as having an end result."
Jeff Gilbride can be reached at 781-398-8005 or jgilbrid@cnc.com.
