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Integrating the Electronic Desktop into the Natural Sciences
Curriculum Development Project at California State University, Los Angeles
DoNothing was created to introduce students to the NEXTSTEP user interface. The application incorporates many of the interface control objects one encounters using NEXTSTEP: resizable windows, menus and submenus, push, on/off and toggle buttons, radio buttons, switches, pop-up and pull-down menus, sliders, text fields, color wells, scrolling text views, browsers, and alert panels. It can also be used to introduce working with text, spell checking, color and font selection, defining page layouts, printing, and services. Since the application has no real functionality, students can focus on how interface control objects work. A screen image of a DoNothing session appears below. DoNothing was written by Dr. Robert Desharnais.
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Click to download full resolution image (85.8 KB.)
The Electronic Desktop Project is about improving the way science is taught and learned by bringing the power of advanced workstation technology to introductory science students in both major and general education classes. This involves changing the way in which instruction is delivered using multi-media electronic mail, custom written visualization applications, powerful commercial software packages, and easy-to-use graphical applications that bring the resources of the Internet into the electronic classroom. This project has been funded by grants USE 9153162, DUE 9156142 and DUE 9455428 from the National Science Foundation. For more information contact Dr. Robert Desharnais (biology), (213) 343-2056, rdeshar@calstatela.edu, or Dr. Gary Novak (geology), (213) 343-2406, gnovak@calstatela.edu, California State University, Los Angeles, California, 90032.
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