5. Terms Glossary
- Automatic Slide Break Generation
- Slide breaks are inserted such that, a slide is composed of lecture elements such that a lecture element of level n is never visible with another lecture element of level n, unless they all fit on the same slide and are children of the same parent at level n - 1.
- Chat
- The chat window is where teachers and students can communicate with short text messages. Each conversation in the chat window has it's own copy of the public lecture. This copy is shared between all members of that chat conversation.
- Collapsed
- A lecture element that has children that are not shown in the outline preview or the main view.
- Drawing Surface
- A transparent virtual 'slate' which covers any drawable object in the eClass program, such as pages or the whiteboard. Any drawings made are made on a drawing surface.
- Drawing
- A collection of drawing primitives that are attached to a drawing surface.
- eClass Window
- The eClass window is the main application window, and contains the roster, outline prieview, and the main view.
- Expanded
- A lecture element in the outline preview that is not collapsed.
- Hidden
- The child of an expanded lecture element that is not visible in the main view. To make a hidden lecture element visible, the user clicks the hidden element.
- Lecture
- A lecture is alternately the XML defining the pages and slides that are generated when the lecture is presented in eclass, or, those rendered slides. Every lecture, when inside eclass, has a set of slides and a whiteboard.
- Lecture Element
- A lecture element can contain other lecture elements. A lecture element contains textual or image data.
- Lecture view mode
- The lecture view mode is one of two things, namely "Slides" mode or "Whiteboard" mode. The user selects which mode he or she desires in the main view. In "Slides" mode, the user can view the slides generated from the lecture XML. In "Whiteboard" mode, the user can view the whiteboard for that lecture.
- Main view
- The main view is a window in the eClass window that displays the rendered lecture, and is divided up into three tabs.
- Outline Depth
- This slider controls the level to which the tree of lecture elements is expanded. The number of ticks on this slider reflects the maximum number of levels in the lecture.
- Outline preview
- A window in the eClass window that displays a text peview of the lecture outline, and shows where eClass has broken each page into slides. The outline preview is also where all interactive adding of slide breaks occurs.
- Page
- A page is a section of the lecture composed of slides and a drawing surface. A page is viewed in the lecture as either a series of slides or a single, scrollable slide. The top of a page is the anchor point for that page's drawing surface.
- Page Breaks
- Separation between pages defined by the user prior to presenting the lecture.
- Public/Private/Chat Tabs
- These tabs are located in the Main view, and each correspond to a single copy of a lecture. They each have different permissions regarding how the user is allowed to interact with their contents. Each tab can be viewed in either the "Slides" lecture view mode, or the "Whiteboard" lecture view mode.
- Roster
- The roster is a window in the eClass window that displays information about what people are currently viewing the lecture. The names listed on the roster may be used to begin chat conversations.
- Scrollable
- An attribute of a page or a slide. If a page is scrollable, then it is displayed as a single slide with a scrollbar on the side of it. A scrollable slide is one such slide.
- Slide
- The lecture elements contained between two slide breaks. If the number of lecture elements between two slide breaks is greater than will fit on the screen, the slide is scrollable.
- Slide Breaks
- A marker placed between two lecture elements demarcating a slide.
- Whiteboard
- An infinite drawing surface that co-exists with the slides of any lecture, and is accessable through the "Whiteboard" lecture view mode in any tab.
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