Glossary of common terms

Dashboard is a customisable page in Moodle that provides users with links to their courses and activities within them, such as unread forum posts and upcoming assignments.

See the documentation Dashboard for more details.

Internet Information Services - Microsoft's answer to Apache. This is software, that, when installed on a machine, provides a web service. Just like Apache, IIS listens to port 80 and answers any http requests from client machines.

Constructionist learning is inspired by the constructivist theory that individual learners construct mental models to understand the world around them. However, constructionism holds that learning can happen most effectively when people are also active in making tangible objects in the real world. In this sense, constructionism is connected with experiential learning, and builds on Jean Piaget's epistemological theory of constructivism.

Seymour Papert defined constructionism in a proposal to the National Science Foundation entitled Constructionism: A New Opportunity for Elementary Science Education as follows: "The word constructionism is a mnemonic for two aspects of the theory of science education underlying this project. From constructivist theories of psychology we take a view of learning as a reconstruction rather than as a transmission of knowledge. Then we extend the idea of manipulative materials to the idea that learning is most effective when part of an activity the learner experiences as constructing a meaningful product."

Source: Wikipedia.org

The zone of proximal development, often abbreviated ZPD, is the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help. It is a concept introduced yet not fully developed by Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934) during the last two years of his life. Also, many theorists are still applying to their work today.

Vygotsky stated that a child follows an adult's example and gradually develops the ability to do certain tasks without help. Vygotsky's often-quoted definition of zone of proximal development presents it as...

"...the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers. For example, two 8 yr. old children may be able to complete a task that an average 8 yr. old can do. Next, more difficult tasks are presented with very little assistance from an adult. In the end, both children were able to complete the task. However, the styles methods they chose depended on how far they were willing to stretch their thinking process."

Vygotsky and some educators believe education's role is to give children experiences that were within their zones of proximal development, thereby encouraging and advancing their individual learning.

"The zone of proximal development defines functions that have not matured yet, but are in a process of maturing, that will mature tomorrow, that are currently in an embryonic state; these functions could be called the buds of development, the flowers of development, rather than the fruits of development, that is, what is only just maturing."

Source: Wikipedia.org

NZ Open Source VLE Project is a New Zealand-based project, hosted at Eduforge.org

It is helping Moodle adoption as part of a greater project of developing OSS e-learning application software for deployment throughout New Zealands education sector. System integration of portal website framework, lcms, content creation tools and modular toolkit.