Dare County Schools

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Check out this website http://www.techterms.com/ for a comprehensive index of technology terms - it has a wealth of info. Check out the terms of use, site is copyrighted!

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements and games.

Aggregator / Feed reader - A web feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, is a web service which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.

Ajax - A programming platform that enables Web sites to work more interactively because features can load one at a time. It lets Web sites have the power and feel of a desktop software program, rather than a slow-loading Internet application. The ability to "grab" a Google map and move it around on a page is an example.

Blog / Vlog - A short form for weblog, a frequent and chronological publication of comments and thoughts on the web. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site. The addition of video has created a new category, video blogs (vlog).

Community - Many Web 2.0 sites rely on users to fill them with content, to edit the content and to keep the site's other users behaving politely. MySpace.com created a vast community by allowing anyone to establish an online presence; sites like Digg and StumbleUpon allow users to rate news stories and other Web sites while connecting with other like-minded users.

Del.icio.us -  a social bookmarking site that allows a user to save their Internet bookmarks online.  Instead of saving bookmarks to your computer's web browser, you are saving them to the web and can access them anywhere with an Internet connection. This is a great way that users can collect, organize and search through bookmarked websites, especially if they frequently use multiple computers.  The "bookmarking" uses tags which help you to save, organize, and identify all of your favorite websites. So, why is it "social" bookmarking?  Users can search bookmarks of other Delicious members and easily share them with co-workers and friends. (Thanks to Technology Resource Teachers)

Drupal - Drupal is an open source (free) web content management framework/system that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.

Facebook - Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.[1] Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of a book given to incoming students at Zuckerberg's high school alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy. The book shows the faces and names of the school's students and faculty. (Courtesy Wikipedia)

Glogster is a social network that allows users to create free interactive posters, or glogs. The glog, short for graphical blog, is an interactive multimedia image. It looks like a poster, but readers can interact with the content. Glogster provides an environment to design interactive posters. The user inserts text, images, photos, audio (MP3), videos, special effects and other elements into their glogs to generate a multimedia online creation.^[Glogster is based on flash elements.Posters can be shared with other people. Glogs can also be exported and saved to computer-compatible formats. The growing popularity of Glogster helped spawn Glogster EDU to assist teachers in providing dynamic and interactive teaching experiences.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) - Most websites are written using HTML. HTML is a programming language that allows web designers to arrange text, images, and links in a document that is viewable on the Internet.

Internet Browser - A program that allows you to view websites on the Internet. The most widespread application is Microsoft's Internet Explorer. There are others available such as Firefox, and Netscape Navigator.

Mashups - The combination of two Web sites into a new site, such as www.housingmaps.com, which “mashes” Craigslist's real estate ads with Google Maps to create a visual representation of apartments for rent (or homes for sale) in a given region.

Moodle - An open source e-learning platform. It has a relatively large -and rapidly growing- user base Web cast; the delivery of live or delayed sound or video broadcasts using web technologies. The sound or video is captured by conventional video or audio systems. It is then digitized and streamed on a web server.

On-demand - Companies sell software by subscription over the Internet, where it can be easily updated. Data is stored on Internet servers and therefore accessible from anywhere, on-demand.

Open source - Software developers make their source code, or the guts of their programs, available to anyone for collaboration. (AKA freeware)

PDF (Portable Document Format) - A format developed by Adobe for representing documents in their original format - like a series of pages in a book. A PDF file can describe documents containing any combination of text, graphics, and images.

Podcast -Podcasting is a convenient way of automatically downloading audio or video files to your computer. You can then play this audio or video on your computer or transfer the files to a portable MP3 or video player. 'Podcast' generally refers to audio. 'Video Podcast' (or 'Vodcast') refers to the distribution of video files in the same manner. A blend of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcasting", podcasting a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically by subscription, usually at no cost. It first became popular in late 2004, used largely for audio files.

Post - A noun for a message entered into a network such as a newsgroup. The message is called "a post" or "a posting." As a verb, it means the same as "to put up."

Quizlet - electronic flashcard Web 2.0 application.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) - RSS is an alternative means of accessing the vast amount of information that now exists on the world wide web. Instead of the user browsing websites for information of interest, the information is sent directly to the user/subscriber. An RSS document, which is called a "feed," "web feed," or "channel," contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.

Skype - Enabling users to make phone calls over the Internet to anywhere in the world, Skype is a free Voip (voice over internet protocol) solution, that requires the ability to record and playback audio. Add ons such as the ability to call out and in to POTS (standard phone lines) and soft answering machines (SAM is an freeware example) make this a versatile method of synchronous and asynchronous communication. The program and more information can be had at http://www.skype.com/.

Social networking - Web sites that allow people to link to others, whether it's educators on EdTEchTalk.com, business people on LinkedIn, or high school chums on Classmates.com.

Spoof - A spoof Web site is one that mimics a popular company's Web site to lure you into disclosing confidential information. To make spoof sites seem legitimate, identity thieves use the names, logos, graphics and even code of the real company's site.

Stream or streaming (AKA online feed) - Also known as "streaming media," it is the transmission of a media clip, over a network, so that it begins playing back as quickly as possible. Streaming is an Internet data transfer technique that allows users to see video and hear audio files without lengthy download times. In other words, it is the live flow of digital information.

Tags - Keywords attached to photos or Web pages to help identify them and make them searchable. For example, photos on Flickr typically carry many tags, and the social bookmarking site Del.icio.us allows users to post their favorite Web sites and then tag them, creating a new tool for searching those sites.

Twitter - A free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees. (Thanks to Wikipedia)

Web.20 - The evolution of the Web from a read-mostly medium to a read-write, or two-way medium. Web 2.0 generally refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online.

Wiki - The word comes from a Hawaiian phrase, wiki-wiki, meaning fast. But Jimmy Wales applied it to the Web-based encyclopedia he was building, Wikipedia, and now the prefix has come to mean a Web site that allows users to to add and edit content collectively.