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Sixth Grade Science Teacher Designs Her Own Website

Stefanie Deringer of West Hollow now has followers worldwide.

 

About six or seven years ago, Stefanie Deringer found that her school's textbooks didn't have enough information.

"The textbooks just weren't meeting my needs," she said. "And I was using links to other people's websites but then the websites would be gone after a year. So I decided to make my own."

Deringer said she had taken 18 credits of computer science classes, and knew some HTML code, so she felt she could do it. She purchased Adobe Dreamweaver.

"And I just started playing around with it," she said.

Her website, mresdlovescience.com, covers all the sixth grade science topics, including life science, earth science and physical science. 

"The parents love using it as a resource," she said. 

Her website is hosted by Yahoo and there are daily statistics about it that she can see (how many viewers, what they are viewing, etc.), but she said she never paid much attention to it. 

Until recently, when the school had a contest to see whose website got the most visitors.

"And I saw I was getting 10,000 a month," Deringer said. "And I was getting emails from around the world, thanking me for the website and asking if they could link to it. I got an email from a science teacher at an English language school in the Republic of Moldova. I had to ask one of the social studies teachers where that even was."

(In case you are as curious as I was, I'll save you the research: The Republic of Moldova is in central Europe in the northeastern Balkans.) 

The power of the web is an amazing thing. 

About this column: Each week Half Hollow Hills Patch will spotlight a local resident with an interesting story. To suggest someone for this column, e-mail editor Karen Forman at karenf@patch.com.

Debbie Kohlhepp

2:17 pm on Tuesday, February 15, 2011

It is about time that Mrs. Deringer gets recognition for her exemplary work in our district- she has been technologically advanced for many years and most times it is on her own time. Her love for science and her students is outstanding! Thanks for the great article!

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Karen Forman

5:40 pm on Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Thank you! It's great to "meet" all these amazing people in HHH! Everyone: I am always looking to feature a student, teacher or resident of the HHH school district. Please email me at karenf@patch.com. Thanks so much!

Hannah

9:08 pm on Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Great article! Mrs. D is a great science teacher and her website really helps! =) <3

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Rachel

8:17 am on Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Mrs.D worked so hard on that website!!! It is fantastic for studying on for upcoming tests!!! Thanks to her website, I doing great in science!!! You should definetly go on it!! Its good for all sixth graders, because it covers all of the topics!!

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