All full-time Rio Salado faculty recently received
portable computers. Library faculty Debbie Anderson is
providing Internet training and has been promoting the use
of the World Wide Web. This semester she is leading weekly
seminars to follow up on the instructional use of Internet,
as well as reviewing software for word processing,
presentation, and graphics.
John Arle is converting his lecture notes to Microsoft
PowerPoint , and is including animations and images. "I am
not really using the chalkboard anymore in the traditional
sense," says Arle. With funding from a National Science
Foundation grant, Arle and Dennis Shaw now have 20
Macintosh Powerbooks for a mobile lab at Rio Salado sites
lacking computer facilities. The computers will be set up
with the simulations to replace traditional labs in genetics
and photosynthesis.
Vernon Smith's International Plaza is a multimedia
application that he created in Toolbook. Users practice
Spanish by exploring different regions of the world and
communicating by electronic mail with people in other
countries. Smith also uses software that accompanies Spanish
and German language textbooks, as well as the Berlitz
packages and Power Spanish. One of Smith's more useful tools
is Spanish Amigo, a language translator that can be called
from within his Windows word processing application.