9352167 Harnack Traditional weather laboratory materials consist of data printouts which the student decodes, plots, and analyzes. Available interactive software performs these and a number of other important tasks on microcomputers thereby increasing student understanding of the complex three dimensional motion of the atmosphere. Experience gained with the McIDAS (Man- computer Interactive Data Access System) software operating on two stand-alone PC workstations makes it clear that the new technology can be brought into the classroom for use in completing laboratory assignments with real-time data. This project is setting up a local area network in the weather laboratory classroom so that McIDAS and other similar software is accessible by students during the two required senior level laboratory courses, and by sophomores in an introductory lab course, offered by the Department of Meteorology and Physical Oceanography. The affected courses' lab assignments are being changed so that the students are gaining extensive experience in the use of graphical weather analysis and display systems. The equipment being used to accomplish this objective includes a SUN SPARCsystem 10 (acting as file server) together with four Gateway 2000 486/DX2-50 microcomputers (acting as student workstations) in an Ethernet local area network. ***
