ActiveX

A set of rules designed for controlling Windows applications that are downloaded and run on a browser. ActiveX is only supported on the Microsoft Explorer browser. (http://www.activex.com)

Activity

A device which helps learners to understand a new topic. It is placed where the new topic is introduced and essentially formative in purpose. Activities might include: recalling/reflecting on own experience; listing examples; analyzing mini case studies; making calculations and drawing diagrams.

Adobe PhotoShop

Graphics editing software for professionals.

Adobe Premiere

Graphics and Video editing resource.

ADSL(“X-DSL”)

Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
A data signal compression technology developed by AT&T to deliver very high data transfer speeds over existing copper wires.

Agent

A program which moves from server to server on the Internet and accesses resources in the name of the person who started it. Agents can perform certain tasks such as collecting news, gathering stock quotes, etc. Intelligent agents can learn what people like and dislike about the information that the agent finds for them and use this information to locate material more interesting to the agents user. (http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/)

AIFF 

One of main audio file formats used on Internet Mac/SGI system.

Anchor 

A certain tag used in HTML to define a connection point inside a document.

AOL 

America Online. 
An Internet provider and one of the most popular on-line services, offering, for example, E-mail, news wire reports, and user forums

Applet

A Java program which is sent to a browser which can then run the program using a built in interpreter. Applets can do almost everything that a normal program can do, such as process data and draw graphics. The browser must be able to handle Java in order to run the applet. (http://www.javasoft.com/applets/index.html)

Archive

In general terms an archive is a storage place for data which is no longer needed. An archive file is when a number of files have been merged into one file by a special program called an archiver. This archive file also contains information indicating how the files it contains were named and arranged. The most common archivers are 'pkzip' (PC), 'tar' (Unix) and 'stuffit' (Macintosh). Pkzip archives are placed in files which end in 'zip', tar archives are placed in files which end in 'tar' and 'stuffit' archive files end in 'hqx'.

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange. 
ASCII sometimes also referred to as 'plain text'. Essentially the basic character set, with minimal formatting (i.e. without changes in font, font size, use of italics etc).

Assignment

A piece of work completed by the learner and sent to a tutor for comment and assessment.

Asynchronous communication

A method of communication where messages are sent and received over a time period. An analogy would be posting a letter, the writer creates and sends the letter. The receiver waits for the letter and sends a reply when it is received. Asynchronous communication usually appears in the computer world as email. Email is usually personal asynchronous communication in that email is sent from one person to another. A method of sending asynchronous communication that involves larger amounts of people , i.e. one person sends a message to many, would be a bulletin board, a list server or Usenet News.

ATM 

Asynchronous Transfer Mode. 
A transmission technique in which data is divided into fixed-length cells that can be flexibly routed through the network. ATM employs small packets of uniform size, and can achieve a much higher and more reliable performance over a network than existing switching techniques.

AU

One of main audio file formats used on Internet. It is a format of Sun/NeXT system.

Authoring tool, authorware

 A program that helps you write hypertext or multimedia applications. Authoring tools usually enable you to create a final application merely by linking together objects, such as a paragraph of text, an illustration, or a song. By defining the objects' relationships to each other, and by sequencing them in an appropriate order, authors (those who use authoring tools) can produce attractive and useful graphics applications. Most authoring systems also support a scripting language for more sophisticated applications. 
The distinction between authoring tools and programming tools is not clear-cut. Typically, though, authoring tools require less technical knowledge to master and are used exclusively for applications that present a mixture of textual, graphical, and audio data. Also known as authorware.

AVI

Audio Video Interleave. A computer file format for storing video. Files in this format can only be played using software able to recognize and decode the AVI format. This standard was developed by Microsoft.