Miamisburg students stay close to Long Island peers

They're one year and 730 miles apart, and yet they're goodfriends.

The one is Brittany Andrix's third-grade students at Miamisburg'sMound Elementary School. The other is Marissa Dublar's second-graders at Southampton Elementary School on Long Island.

How they got together in the first place -- and how they gettogether now -- are the two halves of a single story.

If this sounds like a riddle, it isn't. It's just coincidence

Andrix and her husband, Paul, were honeymooning in Jamaica. Jimand Marissa Dublar were vacationing at the same spot. Neither knewthe other.

"We were just hanging in the pool," Andrix explains. But soon thetwo couples were talking, and Andrix discovered she and Marissa wereboth teachers.

"We just made fast friends with them," Andrix said.

So, with teaching to link the two, each went back to theclassroom convinced that their students would like to meet oneanother, too, and would have plenty to share.

While Andrix and her class at first thought all of New York waslike Manhattan, it wasn't. In fact Southampton was pretty much like"Miamisburg dropped onto an island."

How could the two classes connect?

Initially it was thought they could become pen pals. That ideadidn't generate much interest with the kids, though. They wantedspeedier and more modern communication.

Email was considered, but the logistics seemed overwhelming: toomany email addresses and perhaps too little supervision.

That's when Dublar suggested web pals. Why not connect the twoclassrooms through the Internet, use web cams so students on eachend could see and talk with one another?

Andrix applied for a grant with the Miamisburg EducationFoundation and now finds herself with five web cams. But last Augustshe started with one, and connected it to her own computer.

At first, video was projected so that both classrooms couldcommunicate. And even though that's still the predominant method oflinking, individual students also talk directly to a buddy.

Setting up the buddy system used an older method ofcommunication: writing. The kids wrote autobiographies and mailedthem to the other end. Students were then matched by the teachers.

"Oh, they love it," Andrix said. Students have shared tours oftheir cities (they record them with a Flip camera). Comparing andcontrasting is a skill they're developing in each classroom.

Geography, sociology and just face-to-face fun is all part of theproject.

Andrix and her husband have visited Southampton in person twice.

While the video visits are usually prescheduled, Andrix saideither teacher can call the other for an unarranged visit. Once,when Andrix was home on a snow day, she took a call at her house andshowed the New York kids around.

Andrix, 28, has been teaching at Mound for five years. A graduateof Wright State University, she and Paul live in Miamisburg.