Adapted from the Technology
Glossary
Bob Jenkins, Trinity University
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| MIDI | Musical Instrument Digital Interface audio standardized hardware parameters set under MPC standards for MIDI interfaces that connect electronic keyboards, synthesizers, and related devices to computers. |
| Modem | Device that converts digitized data into analog form for transmission over telephone wire. |
| Motherboard | ircuit board or "logic board inside the computer that contains the central processing unit (CPU), microprocessor support chips, RAM, and slots for adding expansion boards such as audio, scanner, SCSI, and video boards. |
| MUDs, MOOs, MUSes and MUSHes | Multi-User Dimensions or Multiple User Dungeon, or Multiple User Dialogue that use imagery to create artificial environments. There are serious social and education MUDs, and extensions such as Multi-user, Object-Oriented MOO applications that, along with MUDs, have become serious educational experiments and applications. |
| Multimedia | Ability to combine audio, visual, and possibly other types of hardware into a presentation. |
| Multitasking | Execution of programs simultaneously on a single computer. |
| Napster/Gnutella | Software for sharing files over the Internet. |
| Navigation | Navigation of a reader or user through learning and entertainment materials such as electronic books, courseware, and networks. |
| Networks | Linkages between computers allowing data and other digitized information to be transmitted between computers. Networks may be local, regional, national, or international. |
| OCR | Optical Character Recognition software and hardware used to interpret scanned symbols into characters of text or numbers recognized as something other than mere graphics images. |
| Operating system | The master control software system that serves as a foundation for applications software. Examples of past, present, and forthcoming operating systems include MS-DOS, Amiga DOS, Windows, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Chicago, Windows Cairo, OS/2, Workplace OS, Apple/Mac Systems 7 and 8, Taligent (Pink), PowerOpen, NEXTStep, Rhapsody, Unix, SCO, AIX, HP/UX, HP/MPE, SCO Open Desktop, Solaris, and UnixWARE (Novell). |
| Online Learning | e-Learning over the Internet (as opposed to a local or wide area network). |
| Online Training | Same as online learning , only it implies the professional or corporate level. |
| Password | Secret word used to identify a user. |
| PDA | Personal Digital Assistant pocket-sized devices for recording of typed or handwritten messages that can later be ported to computers. |
| PDF and PDA | Portable Document Assistant PostScript formatting technology that attempts to provide a viable way of exchanging documents across operating systems and different types of software. |
| Pentium | High speed processor that followed the 486 processors of Intel. |
| Pixel | he rectangular "dots that comprise the smallest units of screen color variations. |
| Portal | gather a variety of useful information resources into a single, Web page, |
| Protocol | Any formal description of message formats and the rules two computers must follow to exchange those messages. |
Page last updated May 8, 2006
Site authored by Jeff Getchell
