The Chronicle of Higher Education -- July 8, 1992



"Teaching With Technology"
California State University at Los Angeles

Beginning next fall, genetics students at California State University at Los Angeles will be able to "design" and "mate" flies on their new computers with a new simulation program called "FlyLab." The program, which runs on NeXT machines, will let students see how genetic qualities are passed from parent to offspring.

"FlyLab" allows students to experiment with more variations than they could in a normal laboratory experiment, says Robert Desharnais, an assistant professor of biology who designed the program. "'FlyLab' provides tremendous flexibility," he says. "Students see mutations such as curly wings or wingless, and they can actually see what the fly looks like."

Students design their parent flies in the program’s "construct a fly" window, selecting from numerous possible mutations. Then they drag the two flies into the "mating" window and click the "mate" button. Another window appears, showing the offspring.

Any two flies can be mated to produce more offspring, which can then be mated to produce subsequent generations.

Students study the offspring to determine which traits are inherited and in what proportions.

For more information, contact Mr. Desharnais Department of Biology, California State University, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles 90032; (213) 343- 2056; bob@biolinext.calstatela.edu


Western Michigan University

A faculty member at Western Michigan University is creating a computer art gallery for students studying Abstract Expressionism, Impressionism, and other art movements.

For the past six months, L. John Link. a professor of art, has been digitizing the color slides he shows in his class and making them available on a NeXT machine for his art-history students to examine after class. Using a scanner, he has completed about 150 slides and has incorporated them with text into the computer.

"The question I always get from art-history students is, 'Why can’t I get a chance to look at slides outside of class?'" Mr. Link says. "We can't lend out those slides because they are needed by other instructors and, in most cases we have only one copy of each slide. This seemed like a logical solution."

When it comes to color reproduction, the images on the computer screen are better than the slides shown in the classroom, Mr. Link says. In classes, students have to have enough light to take notes, and that is usually too much light to see the true colors, he adds.

Mr. Link says he hopes to digitize about 2,000 more of the art department's 100,000 color slides.

For more information, contact Mr. Link, Department of Art, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Mich., 49008; (616) 387-2453.