Talk the Talk

Below is a glossary of Web 2.0 terms to use a reference when talking technology.

GLOSSARY
Blog
A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
As of September 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 106 million blogs.

Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Games
A generational divide in games play is still evident, with a significant majority of teachers (72%) not playing games for leisure, compared with 82% of students playing games outside lessons at least once a fortnight. Boys are more likely to play games for leisure than girls. The majority of teachers and students surveyed reported that they thought games would motivate students to engage with learning.
WHY GAMES FOR TRAINING?

Games are:
Inexpensive
Augment and reinforce classroom training and field exercises
Promote self-development.

An increasing number of leaders and trainers are incorporating games into institutional training, operational training settings and self-development programs. They use games to train individual skills, small unit tactics and to assist in mission rehearsals while deployed. Games provide visualizations of tactics, techniques and procedures and are especially effective for “Crawl” and “Walk” stages of training. As a training aid they help instructors exploit teaching points with dynamic, visual presentations and provide students the opportunity to repetitiously practice critical tasks.

Flickr
Flickr is a photo sharing website and web services suite, and an online community platform. It was one of the earliest Web 2.0 applications. In addition to being a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Its popularity has been fueled by its innovative online community tools that allow photos to be tagged and browsed by folksonomic means.
GarageBand
GarageBand features a block like interface in which different strands of notes, referred to as loops, fit together on separate levels, referred to as tracks or instruments. The program comes with pre-made loops that you simply drag-and-drop into tracks. There are three types of tracks: software instruments, real instruments and imported MIDI tracks.
Software instruments are instruments built into the application similar to how instruments are built into a synthesizer. Since all of the instruments use the same concert pitch, you have the ability to alter software loops. You can only write music for the software instruments since their notes are built into the system. There are several ways of inputting musical notes and rhythms. The most practical way if you really want to record as if you were playing the piano but without any hardware attachments is the musical typing feature. Editing of recorded tracks is possible via a piano-roll or staff (standard notation) edit mode. Notes can be created/added, modified or deleted.
The other type of track is called a "Real Instrument" track. This is where the recording process of GarageBand comes in. Using a microphone or plugging the instrument directly in (or through an audio interface/mixer), you can record an instrument being played or a voice-over. You can apply several effects to the recorded mesh such as "Glam" if you wanted an electrical guitar sound or "Deeper Vocals" if you wanted a voice to sound lower.
Both tracks can be used together in the final production. You could have a software instrument drum line that is looping over and over again, while a real instrument track has you playing a melody on the trombone or any instrument.
In GarageBand 3, a movie track was added to allow for accurate film scoring. The new interface allows you to watch a movie while creating or playing back your music in GarageBand.

I.S.T.E.
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is the trusted source for professional development, knowledge generation, advocacy, and leadership for innovation. A nonprofit membership organization, ISTE provides leadership and service to improve teaching, learning, and school leadership by advancing the effective use of technology in PK–12 and teacher education. Home of the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS), the Center for Applied Research in Educational Technology (CARET), and the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC), ISTE represents more than 85,000 professionals worldwide.

Jing
Is Jing a product? Not exactly. Is Jing a “beta”? Well, it’s not exactly that either. Jing is a concept that we’re evaluating to see if it can improve everyday conversations. Determining if Jing will be a product is what we are trying to do by gathering feedback from people like you. We think it’s a great way to improve daily conversations via email, IM chats and blog posts.
How do I use it?
Well, if you want the walk-through, check out this video and the getting-started stuff here.
“Think of Jing as a supplement to all your chat discussions, email threads, forum posts and blog entries. It sits nicely on your desktop, ready to capture and share your stuff at a moment’s notice. Simply select an area of your screen, capture it as an image or record it as a video, and then click Share. Jing conveniently places a URL to your content on your clipboard ready for you to paste the URL into any of your conversations.” Tony Dunckel

Machinima
Machinima ~ a portmanteau of machine cinema,[1] is both a collection of associated production techniques and a film genre defined by those techniques. As a production technique, the term concerns the rendering of computer-generated imagery (CGI) using real-time, interactive (game) 3D engines, as opposed to high-end and complex 3D animation software used by professionals. Engines from first-person shooter and role-playing simulation video games are typically used. Consequently, the rendering can be done in real-time using PCs (either using the computer of the creator or the viewer), rather than with complex 3D engines using huge render farms. As a film genre, the term refers to movies created by the techniques described above. Usually, machinima productions are produced using the tools (demo recording, camera angle, level editor, script editor, etc.) and resources (backgrounds, levels, characters, skins, etc.) available in a game.
Machinima is an example of emergent gameplay, a process of putting game tools to unexpected ends, and of artistic computer game modification. The real-time nature of machinima means that established techniques from traditional film-making can be reapplied in a virtual environment. As a result, production tends to be cheaper and more rapid than in keyframed CGI animation. It can also produce more professional appearing production than is possible with traditional at-home techniques of live video tape, or stop action using live actors, hand drawn animation or toy props.

Meebo
Meebo is an in-browser instant messaging program which supports multiple IM services, including Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ [1], and Jabber and is based on the free and open source library libpurple created by the software developers of Pidgin[2].
Although still in its early stages, the goal of the project is to combine the multiple-network connectivity of Trillian and Pidgin (formerly Gaim) with the in-browser availability of AIM Express. Meebo includes features such as invisible sign on (to prevent others from knowing when a user connects) and simultaneous connections to multiple IM services[3].
Meebo has the ability to store chat logs with an associated Meebo user account. Users with Meebo login names also have the ability to rename contacts.
Meebo incorporated send and receive notification sounds and the ability to send messages to contacts that are not on your contact list.
"meebo me" widget, which allows users to embed a version of Meebo on their personal website.
"Meebo Rooms". Users of Meebo can connect to chat rooms or host their own for which multiple friends can join and chat. Meebo Rooms also grants a degree of control to the user with invite and ban authority. Meebo Rooms is a big leap forward for Meebo because it is more reliant on newer browsers.
On October 29, 2007, Meebo announced the ability to use applications of Voice Chat

Moodle
Moodle is a free software e-learning platform (also known as a Course Management System (CMS), or Learning Management Systems (LMS), or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)). It has a significant user base with 25,281 registered sites with 10,405,167 users in 1,023,914 courses (as of May 13, 2007) [1]. Moodle is designed to help educators create online courses with opportunities for rich interaction. Its’ open source license and modular design means that people can develop additional functionality. Development is undertaken by a globally diffused network of commercial and non-commercial users and has many features expected from an e-learning platform including:
Forums
Content managing (resources)
Blogs
Wikis
Database activities
Surveys
Chat
Peer assessment
Multi-language support (over 60 languages are supported for the interface [2])
Pedagogical approach
The stated philosophy of Moodle [5] includes a constructivist and social constructionist approach to education, emphasising that learners (and not just teachers) can contribute to the educational experience in many ways. Moodle's features reflect this in various design aspects, such as making it possible for students to comment on entries in a database (or even to contribute entries themselves), or to work collaboratively in a wiki.
The word Moodle is actually an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment

MUVE
MUVE (plural MUVEs) refers to online, multi-user virtual environments, sometimes called virtual worlds. While this term has been used previously to refer to a generational change in MUDs, MOOs, and MMORPGs, it is most widely used to describe MMOGs that are not necessarily game-specific. Modern MUVEs have 3D isometric/third-person graphics, are accessed over the Internet, allow for some dozens of simultaneous users to interact, and represent a persistent virtual world.

Podcast
A podcast is a digital media file, or a related collection of such files, which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. The term, like "radio", can refer either to the content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

Proxy server
In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application program) which services the requests of its clients by forwarding requests to other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server provides the resource by connecting to the specified server and requesting the service on behalf of the client. A proxy server may optionally alter the client's request or the server's response, and sometimes it may serve the request without contacting the specified server. In this case, it would 'cache' the first request to the remote server, so it could save the information for later, and make everything as fast as possible.

Remote Responders
The software allows the instructor to construct and organize a set of classroom material to be delivered in a fun and fast-paced environment. The hardware consists of numbered remote response pads that allow students to beam their answers to a receiver unit. The software can then generate detailed reports about how each student performs in class.
Provides two modes of assessment: (1) the Teacher Managed mode, and (2) the Student Managed mode. The Teacher Managed mode lets the teacher control the pace and students' progress through the questions. Students read the test questions that are displayed on a projection screen and beam their response into the receiver unit. The instructor manages the assessment by advancing the display of the assessment questions - the pace, therefore, is at the discretion of the instructor. Below each test question, the instructor has the option to display the response pad indicators which show by number which response pads have successfully beamed in an answer

RSS
RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. 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.
RSS content can be read using software called an "RSS reader," "feed reader" or an "aggregator." The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds.
The initials "RSS" are used to refer to the following formats:
Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)
Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)

Screencast
A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration. Although the term screencast dates from 2004, products such as Lotus ScreenCam were used as early as 1993.[citation needed] Early products produced large files and had limited editing features. More recent products support more compact file formats such as Macromedia Flash and have more sophisticated editing features allowing changes in sequence, mouse movement, and audio.
Just as a screenshot is a picture of a user's screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of what a user sees on their monitor.
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information which must be consulted, akin to other techniques for managing information overload.[citation needed]
Search engines provide an interface to a group of items that enables users to specify criteria about an item of interest and have the engine find the matching items. The criteria are referred to as a search query. In the case of text search engines, the search query is typically expressed as a set of words that identify the desired concept that one or more documents may contain.[1]
The list of items that meet the criteria specified by the query is typically sorted, or ranked, in some regard so as to place the most relevant items first. Ranking items by relevance (from highest to lowest) reduces the time required to find the desired information. Probabilistic search engines rank items based on measures of similarity and sometimes popularity or authority. Boolean search engines typically only return items which match exactly without regard to order.

Twitter
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, email, or an application such as Twitterrific.
Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default).

Video and PC games for education
Some people call these types of games edutainment because they combine education and entertainment. Closely related to the use of educational games is the use of what is known as Serious games. An educational computer game can be defined as an electronic medium with all the characteristics of a gaming environment that have intended educational outcomes targeted at specific groups of learners. A closely related concept is Digital Game-Based Learning, which combines serious learning and interactive entertainment in a fun, engaging and highly exciting medium.
Computer games can aid the development of proficiency by allowing users to interact with objects and manipulate variables. They are said to be particularly effective when designed to address a specific problem or teach a certain skill in curriculum subjects, where specific objectives can be stated and when deployed selectively within a context relevant to the learning activity and goal.

Voice over IP
Voice over Internet Protocol, also called VoIP (pronounced voyp), IP Telephony, Internet telephony, Broadband telephony, Broadband Phone and Voice over Broadband is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP-based network.
Companies providing VoIP service are commonly referred to as providers, and protocols which are used to carry voice signals over the IP network are commonly referred to as Voice over IP or VoIP protocols.
Voice over IP protocols carry telephony signals as digital audio, typically reduced in data rate using speech data compression techniques, encapsulated in a data packet stream over IP.

WIKI
A wiki is a type of computer software that allows users to easily create, edit and link web pages. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, power community websites, and are increasingly being installed by businesses to provide affordable and effective Intranets or for use in Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work".[1] One of the best-known wikis is Wikipedia.[2]

WiZiQ
WiZiQ brings students and teachers together regardless of boundaries at no cost via virtual classrooms. Teachers use the site to find, share, download or upload Powerpoints on educational subjects and topics. Sessions use an intuitive interface to bring together groups of various sizes in an educational environment.
The classroom is equipped with live audio-video communication, chat, content sharing, and session recording capabilities. No download is required since it works with any web browser and on any operating system.

YouTube
YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. YouTube was created in mid February 2005 by three former PayPal employees.[1] The San Bruno-based service uses Adobe Flash technology to display a wide variety of video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging and short original videos.