A.  Essay    Back Home

My name is Soterios Lallas and I have been teaching for 32 years and have been involved in many areas of education.  With the help on one of my students (Thanks Phil) I  developed a teaching web site at school ten years ago, Ak's Page Away From Home.  The use of my site is to supplement the textbook.  New textbooks cost over $90 each and we are on a six rotation at my school.  Instead of purchasing new books every six years, I have the old ones rebound and use the textbook money to purchase new computer hardware and software. In addition I have many fundraisers which has allowed me to purchase 12 computers for my room, a video projector, scope cam, and an Elmo.  My students have sold T-Shirts and Recycled Ink Cartridges for the past 10 years to help supplement my budget.  Now the students can access their old biology textbook on CD's, page for page, on the computers in my room.  The CD technology was available with the 1995 textbook I purchased but it took several years of fund raising to get 12 computers for my biology classroom to run the CD version of the textbook.  With the addition of Internet my students can also log on to the web and my website appears with an outline for the year, assignments, photos in class, and HOMEWORK (if a student is absent and has Internet access at home- no excuses!!!).  One of the unique lessons I do is to have my students dissect animals on the computer via my web site.  I have found that the students who first practice dissecting on the computer learn more and they have a better understanding of the dissection process.  If they choose to dissect the preserves specimens they seem more inquisitive and less squeamish. Check out 4th quarter and scroll down to dissections. 

Five years ago I planned to share what I had done with science teachers from other schools.  As it turns out this very easy to do.  All I did was to get my site out on the web and now teachers are constantly hitting it on a daily basis.  I have installed a tracker on my site and can monitor who comes to it.  There are at least one or two hits everyday from High School Hub.  In addition to this, I plan on updating my site on a daily basis.  Since I use my 1995 textbook as a reference, I need to keep the information on my site as current as possible.  The beauty with this is that if there is a late break thru in science on the morning's news, I can have the information on my site as soon as I find out about it. This helps meet my teaching goal which is to keep current with the world as things change in my classroom.

The students love the setup and my student teachers have mixed emotions. The reason for this is that the students teachers  love learning how to use the technology I have been able to acquire but when they land a job in a different school they usually don't have anything in their rooms besides a TV, VCR, and one computer.  Despite this, after their stay with me, they are able to see what can be done and after they get their feet wet, they can start building up the technology in their classrooms.  The last three student teachers I had have set up their own web sites (site 1 -  site 2 -  site 3) and have linked to mine.  I have been able to reach students in other school districts via my site and visa versa.  Last semester one of these former student teachers sent me an e-mail which requested me not to touch the information I had on the third quarter section of my web site.  He was going to teach off of it the following week.  

Although it is very difficult when budgets are tight to set up a room with computers like I have done,  I have been able to accomplish this with the help of my students and community members who support our fund raisers.  Hopefully someday most teachers will be using the web as I am. I wonder how I will be teaching in 5 years?  Five years have past  and  I have added the use of a Smart Board to my classroom.  I don't know how I taught all of these years without one.  The irony is that I took a class on how to use a Smart Board my last year of teaching and purchased one.  One never stops learning. 

Addition to my reflections: 

After 17 years of teaching Biology at Westby, I have to say Copper (Cu) and now finish

my last year in the Chemistry department.  It has been a great and challenging time setting

this website, tree identification, Fastplants, the Cell projects, dissecting, the old ZOO,

Environmental Community Service, recycling ink cartridges and cell phones, selling T-shirts

and Silver Saver cards, growing a trees from a seeds and finally getting the Outdoor Classroom

built just in time for me to not be able to use it.  I couldn't have done it without all the help

from all the students that have gone through the Biology Program at WHS.  A sincere thank you

to everyone.  In the future I invite you to "take a look around and drop me an email."

B. Letters from three references 
 
Letter 1  Dr. Joyce Shanks shanks@mail.uwlax.edu
Letter 2  Dr. Judy Beck jbeck@uscupstate.edu
Letter 3  Mark Byom     mbyom@spartan.org

C. Web site links to additional materials

Accomplishments
Biology Page
Chemistry Page
Homework
Main Page