Work in progress - the use of virtual machines for teaching

The use of virtual machines to deploy software in courses and/or laboratories is discussed. Virtual machine software, such as VMWare, can be installed on every computer and then students can run various operating system images. This allows a separation between the ´application software´ and the hardware platform. For example, a course instructor can prepare a disk image file with an operating system and a suite of commercial or free software. The virtual machine could then be installed on laboratory computers or distributed to the students to run from USB devices. Regardless of what type of computer or operating system the students are using, they will all see and use a consistent computational interface. The paper includes a discussion of the requirements of this technology and various models of how it may impact courses utilizing computers.