Glossaries | Moodle.org

Thursday, 25 April 2024, 5:16 PM

Site: Moodle - Open-source learning platform | Moodle.org

Course: Moodle in English (Moodle in English)

Glossary: Glossary of common terms

COMPUTING TERMS

	Interface by Martin Dougiamas - Wednesday, 13 January 2016, 12:54 AM
	In general an interface is the boundary across which two systems communicate. There are many software interfaces within Moodle, for example, such as the interface a module uses to communicate with the core product, or the interface used to send mail. Usually, though, this term refers to the interface between software and human beings: the user interface. In Moodle, for example, this is what we see and click on in the web browser and in our mail programs, and it provides ways for us to access, understand and change the database at the heart of any Moodle site. The design of such an interface requires collaboration between software developers and users to make it "user-friendly" (and maximise overall usability). A very important requirement for interfaces is standardisation, which reduces the amount of learning that users need to do to explore the features in the software. Moodle has had informal standards in the past, but we are currently writing a more formal specification to help Moodle's many developers produce a more consistent interface, and remove some of the irregular, inefficient or hard-to-learn interfaces that have crept into various corners of Moodle. With Moodle, interface issues should be discussed in the forums most appropriate to them - if you wish to raise discussion about an interface in the Chat module, use the Chat forum. If you have a specific bug or request to report, please use the bug tracker.

	Java by Martin Dougiamas - Friday, 4 March 2005, 9:01 AM
	Java: a programming language that can be used to write all kinds of programs, from Applets which run in the browser to Midlets that run in Palm handhelds or cell phones to desktop client programs and especially server-side programs including web server "servlets". Moodle does not use any Java.

	Javascript by Martin Dougiamas - Wednesday, 1 October 2003, 2:23 PM
	A scripting language that can be used to write small programs in web pages, such as popup menus. Moodle uses a little Javascript.

	JSON by Leon Stringer - Tuesday, 27 July 2021, 9:03 PM
	JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other serializable values). JSON is a language-independent data format. It was derived from JavaScript, but many modern programming languages include code to generate and parse JSON-format data.

	LambdaMOO by W Page - Thursday, 28 October 2010, 7:18 PM
	MOO - LambdaMOO Server "LambdaMOO is a network-accessible, multi-user, programmable, interactive system well-suited to the construction of text-based adventure games, conferencing systems, and other collaborative software." http://sourceforge.net/projects/lambdamoo/

	LAMP by Mokhtar Beldjehem - Friday, 25 September 2009, 3:16 PM
	LAMP, a free open source software solution stack, Linux (as OS), Appache(as a web server), MySQL (as a DBMS server), either PHP, Perl or Python (as a Scripting Language).

	LDAP by Jon Witts - Thursday, 18 June 2009, 6:24 PM
	Lightweight Directory Access Protocol - is an application protocol for modifying directory services. It is commonly used for user and computer directories for domains.

	Mahara by Penny Leach - Thursday, 6 December 2007, 10:16 AM
	Established in 2006, Mahara is the result of a collaborative venture funded by New Zealand's Tertiary Education Commission's e-learning Collaborative Development Fund (eCDF), involving Massey University, Auckland University of Technology, The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand and Victoria University of Wellington. Released in Feb 2007 Mahara is a fully featured electronic portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online communities. Mahara is designed to provide users with the tools to demonstrate their learning, skills and development over time to selected audiences. Meaning `think' or `thought' in Te Reo Maori, the name reflects the project's dedication to creating a user-centred life-long learning and development application as well as the belief that technology solutions cannot be developed outside the considerations of pedagogy and policy. Mahara is provided freely as Open Source software (under the GNU General Public License). In brief, this means that you are allowed to copy, use and modify Mahara provided you agree to; provide the source code to others; not modify or remove the original license and copyrights, and apply this same license to any derivative work. For further information please see https://eduforge.org/projects/mahara/ and http://mahara.org

	MAMP by Colin Fraser - Wednesday, 10 February 2010, 12:34 AM
	Mac, Apache, MySQL and PHP configuration - for the Mac.

	meta tag by Paula Edmiston - Wednesday, 10 December 2003, 2:32 PM
	Meta Data is data about data, describing the type of data under discussion. Meta tags in HTML are used to identify which version of HTML is in use, the language (both used by the browser to parse, or interpret the code) and other technical information. Two special meta tags of great interest to web weavers are the content and keyword tags. These provide special information that's often used by search engines to enhance retrieval of the page.