The Internet by itself offered an excellent static publishing medium, a way of disseminating information, but Java has enabled the development of dynamic teaching tools. Java is a key element of the Scalable and Sustainable Instructional Software Development Model initiative, developed as part of CSU's overall Integrated Technology Strategy. CSU plans to have ten applets online by the fall of 1999. The applets were produced by a team of faculty members working with the technologists in the CDL and its partners. From the beginning, the applets were designed to have applicability that went beyond one course, one professor, or one set of students.
Students can visit the virtual labs whenever they like and conduct as many experiments as they wish.
In addition, CDL is using Biology Labs On-Line as a prototype for another way of sustaining instructional software development. In conjunction with a textbook publisher, CDL is planning to turn the applets into commercial products. By partnering with a publisher, we are working to create a revenue stream that makes it practical to sustain the value of these products over time and to build new ones. And they bring these same values to the way they work and the learning products they build. Macintosh allows creative people to focus more of their energy on designing good products and less on maintaining technology.