ADAPT
Adapting Teaching Materials
for "Any
Day
Any
Place
Teaching"
Glossary of Terms
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Academic Portfolio
Educators generally maintain an academic portfolio to document their professional development for others or to improve their own performance over time.
Academy of Master Teachers
UTMB established the Academy to honor and reward UTMB’s best teaching faculty. It is based on rigorous and objective criteria, and allow teaching faculty to give back to the UTMB educational community to enhance the university’s teaching mission. For more information see the UTMB website.
Accessibility
The web design standards that are implemented to make accessing the web easier for the elderly and users with disabilities. For more information, see the Web Accessibility Initiative.
Adobe Presenter
A tool which helps users transform PowerPoint presentations into multi-media online presentations.
A component that typically executes in a Web browser, but can execute in a variety of other applications or devices that support the applet programming model.
Array
A collection of data items, all of the same type, in which each item's position is uniquely designated by an integer.
Blog
A web log (BLOG) or a web-based journal.
Client
In the client/server model of communications, the client is a process that remotely accesses resources of a compute server, such as compute power and large memory capacity.
Cloud Computing
The latest trend in Computing Solutions. This term applies to computer systems that are outsourced, pay-as-you-go, and exist somewhere in the internet, etc.
Comment
In a program, explanatory text that is ignored by the compiler.
Copyright
The legal rights assigned to literary and artistic creations. For more information see WIPO on copyright.
Course Management
Web-based packages that support teaching and learning by providing integrated web-based tools, services, and resources.
Discussion Board
A discussion board is much like a blog, but this facilitates, initiates and inspires a back and forth discussion in an on-line environment. The content is often managed by some third party software to ensure that proper etiquette and protocol is followed.
Distributed
Running in more than one address space.
Distributed Application
An application made up of distinct components running in separate environments, usually on different platforms connected through a network.
Ergonomics
Designing the job, the equipment, and the workplace to fit the worker. Proper ergonomic design can prevent repetitive strain injuries which often develop over time.
Executable Content
An application that runs from within an HTML file. See also applet.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
This enables the fetching and storing of files between hosts on the Internet.
Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Refers to the techniques involved to integrate the visual graphics, the keyboard and the mouse, to provide an easy-to-use interface to programs.
Hardware
Hardware is the physical components of a computer, computer system or technology in general.
HEAL - (Health Education Assets Library)
A digital library that provides freely accessible digital teaching resources of the highest quality that meet the needs of today's health sciences educators and learners. Heal publishes images, video clips, animations, presentations, and audio files that support healthcare education. These are typically objects that can be used in a variety of presentations across multiple disciplines. It currently has over 22,000 medical education resources. After an item is submitted HEAL users are encouraged to write user reviews and add keywords or “tags”. http://www.healcentral.org/
Hybrid Teaching
Hybrid teaching (part face-to-face, part on-line); Hybrid or blended models of teaching, replace some in-person meetings with virtual sessions.
HTML
This stands for HyperText Markup Language. This is a file format, based on SGML, for hypertext documents on the Internet. It is very simple and allows for the embedding of images, sounds, video streams, form fields and simple text formatting. References to other objects are embedded using URLs.
HTTP
This stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. The Internet protocol, based on TCP/IP, used to fetch hypertext objects from remote hosts. See also TCP/IP.
Intellectual Property
Webster's defines this as, "property that derives from the work of the mind or intellect." It is any innovation, such as a unique name, symbol, logo or design. It is protected by a variety of tools such as, patents on inventions; trademarks on branding devices; copyrights on music, videos, patterns and other forms of expression; and trade secrets for methods or formulas having economic value. For more information please visit: WIPO on intellectual property.
An enormous network consisting of literally millions of hosts from many organizations and countries around the world. It is physically put together from many smaller networks and data travels by a common set of protocols.
Internet Protocol. The basic protocol of the Internet. It enables the unreliable delivery of individual packets from one host to another. It makes no guarantees about whether or not the packet will be delivered, how long it will take, or if multiple packets will arrive in the order they were sent. Protocols built on top of this add the notions of connection and reliability. See also TCP/IP.
Java
Sun's trademark for a set of technologies for creating and safely running software programs in both stand-alone and networked environments.
Learning Module
This is a unit of related learning materials, much like chapters in a book. Learning modules can be comprised of a series of learning objects in a related subject area.
Learning Object (LO)
A digital and most-likely web-based resource that can be used, re-used and shareable to support learning. Thus, it can be used anytime and anyplace.
MedEdPortal
Free peer-reviewed publication service and repository for medical and oral health teaching materials, assessment tools, and faculty development resources provided by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in partnership with the American Dental Education Association (ADEA). It was designed to promote educational collaboration by facilitating the open exchange of peer-reviewed teaching resources such as tutorials, virtual patients, simulation cases, lab guides, videos, podcasts, assessment tools, etc. While MedEdPORTAL's primary audiences include health educators and learners around the globe, it is open and available for free to the general public. It currently has 7,600 submissions and grows by 50 submissions per month. http://www.aamc.org/mededportal
Media
This is used to describe the storage and transmission tools used to store and deliver information or data. It might be used to describe mass media. In electronic communication it may usually refers to a single medium used to communicate any data for any purpose, it can be a paper, a podcast, audio, video, etc..
MERLOT (Multimedia Education Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)
A free, web-based resource and community designed to help you find online teaching and learning materials quickly and easily. It is a searchable collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. MERLOT's vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy. The MERLOT Collection contains over 20,000 materials in the subjects of art, business, education, humanities, mathematics, science & technology, and social sciences. There are 1,290 items in the health sciences category. http://www.merlot.org
Message Board
A message board is like a discussion board. It facilitates, initiates and inspires a back and forth discussion in an on-line environment. The content is often managed by some third party software to ensure that proper etiquette and protocol is followed.
Pixel
The picture element on a display area, such as a monitor screen or printed page. Each pixel is individually accessible.
Podcast
A podcast is a series of audio or video digital media files. This series is distributed over the Internet through Web feeds to portable media players and/or personal computers. The content may be available by direct download or streaming. However, a podcast is distinguished from other digital media downloads by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added.
SQL
This acronym stands for Structured Query Language. The standardized relational database language for defining database objects and manipulating data.
Software
Generally software includes a variety of programs and procedures that perform a task on a computer, this usually includes documentation. It can include media such as film, music and text.
Softchalk
A tool which can help users to create interactive web-based learning modules.
Surveys
web-based applications that allow you to quickly generate professional looking and meaningful surveys. These are programs like SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang.
Transmission Control Protocol based on IP. This is an Internet protocol that provides for the reliable delivery of streams of data from one host to another. See also IP.
Threaded Discussion
This is an electronic discussion. Usually some form of software is used which keeps the threads or topics of discussion linked together in an organized fashion.
URL
This acronym stands for Uniform Resource Locator. A standard for writing a text reference to an arbitrary piece of data in the WWW. A URL looks like "protocol://host/localinfo" where protocol specifies a protocol to use to fetch the object (like HTTP or FTP), host specifies the Internet name of the host on which to find it, and localinfo is a string (often a file name) passed to the protocol handler on the remote host.
Video
a recording of both visual and audible components
Web Server
Software that provides services to access the Internet, an intranet, or an extranet. A Web server hosts Web sites, provides support for HTTP and other protocols, and executes server-side programs (such as CGI scripts or servlets) that perform certain functions.
The
company that provides several collaborative software solutions, like
Wimba Create. They also provide other services to the
higher education and K-12 markets.
A tool which helps a user convert word documents into content for interactive web-pages.
WWW
World Wide Web. The web of systems and the data in them that is the Internet. See also Internet.
XML
This represents the Extensible Markup Language. A markup language that allows you to define the tags (markup) needed to identify the data and text in XML documents.
