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Mahara ePortfolios: Beginner's Guide

Chapter 1. What can Mahara do for you?

So you're interested in Mahara? Maybe you are already using it, but you are wondering if you are using it well. Maybe you've recently heard of Mahara and you are wondering if this is actually the ePortfolio solution you were looking for? Or, maybe you have been told to use it and you just need to get a sense of what Mahara is all about?

In subsequent chapters of this book, you will be digging into the nitty-gritty of getting your Mahara up and running, and then making it work for you as a learner or as a Mahara staff member. This particular book is not specifically pitched at helping Mahara site administrators. Before you start getting down to the basics of Mahara, you need to understand the big picture of what Mahara is about.

In this chapter you will:

Be introduced to the concept of ePortfolios
Learn why Mahara is almost certainly the best option out there for ePortfolio building and reflective learning
Look at some of the different ways in which you can use Mahara
See the four fictional case studies used as examples in this book
Find out how to become a member of the online Mahara community at http://mahara.org
Look at some other Mahara sites that are freely available on the Internet

So let's get on with it!

Portfolios go electronic

You have been learning things since the day you were born. I remember my little boy's first ever picture of a cowboy riding on a horse (it's great) that he made when he was four years old, and I will always remember the wooden toy truck that I made in my woodwork class when I was a teenager. I also proudly remember the written design paper that I had to write for my exam, which was about how I actually made that wooden truck, but now I have lost that design paper and I have no idea where it has gone. Today, I am heavily involved in online distance learning, more specifically ePortfolios, and rarely a day goes by when I don't learn something new.

Now, the thing is, all I now have are memories of my wooden truck, but if I had access back then to a digital ePortfolio, I could have kept a copy of that design paper. I could have scanned it into my computer and stored it as an image (if I hadn't created it digitally in the first place). I could have also stored a video of the 16-year old me showing off my wooden truck and I could have taken digital snapshots of the truck from all angles. If I was feeling really adventurous, I could have combined all these elements together and written about, or videoed myself speaking about how I conceived the idea and how I actually made it.

Maybe my friends would have been really impressed with my wooden truck and wanted to know how to make it, so they could have made one too. So, maybe I would have created a web page to show them. I could add all these videos, pictures, and commentaries to create a really useful and detailed resource page for my friends. Perhaps I didn't (yet) want the world to know about my new carpentry skills — especially not Barry down the road from the rival school. In this case, I could have set up a special group so only the people I selected would be able to view my wooden truck page. Maybe one of my friends would have really liked the truck, and showed his Dad, who was an engineer. Suppose they made one using my web page too, but with some tips from his Dad, they made one that went faster. He then started a forum discussing the improvements they had made. Then perhaps another couple of my friends joined in and got really excited. They shared with the group their own modifications which they had researched on the internet, uploaded a picture of an improved version to the group, and suggested we all got together once a week to work on one together and enter it in the county wooden truck championship.

And all along, without us being aware, let's imagine our teachers looking on smiling. They were watching us develop our IT skills and start off down the path of lifelong learning and collaborative working. They were watching us record our new-found learning and skills whilst developing complex social networking skills. The woodwork teacher sat back in his chair with a warm smile on his face. He knew he had taught me something of much greater worth than how to make a wooden truck.

However, this is all purely fantasy. I did not have access to an ePortfolio that had all this functionality, and the Internet back then was not much more than a concept.

Key benefits

A step-by-step approach that takes you through examples with ample screenshots and clear explanations

Create, customize, and maintain an impressive personal digital portfolio of web pages and mini websites (collections) with a simple point-and-click interface

Create and manage online learning communities and social networks through groups, shared file areas, and forums

Description

Mahara ePortfolios helps you to use software as you follow an experiential learning cycle. In Mahara you can: Plan your learning. Do what you do and gather evidence of your competence as you do those things. View and organize your work by structuring your data in easy-to-make (web)pages and (mini-website) collections of those pages. Reflect on your learning by use of professional journals, engaging feedback on your pages and establishing and engaging in online communities who share a similar interest. Mahara ePortfolios: Beginner's Guide is a step-by-step guide to develop a feature-rich and highly personal electronic portfolio. Form a digital repository of reflective journals, action learning plans, presentations, reports, images and videos. Easily share this with your friends, family, tutors, students, project team and others using this step-by-step guide written in a clear and easy to learn manner.This book guides you to build an impressive e-Portfolio and to work in professional communities of interest within a Mahara walled garden. It brings to life the key features of Mahara which will help thoughtful people to display their artefacts coherently and to engage with like-minded peers professionally.This book introduces you to exciting features of Mahara framework and helps you develop a feature-rich e-portfolio for yourself. You will see how easily you can create folders, upload multiple files like project documents, pictures and videos and share them with your friends. You will learn to set up single pages and collections of pages which organize these files, making these visible only to your own chosen peers, supervisors or friends. Then, you will allow people to give their inputs.You will learn to create journals, learning plans, your professional resume, group spaces and forums which help you get connected to the rest of the world. Customization and administration of your Mahara site will be easy after you have gone through this book. Imagine how good you will feel when you will see your knowledge, success, and ideas going live and available to your chosen audiences for their inputs.Mahara ePortfolios: Beginner's Guide is a step-by-step guide to building an impressive professional e-portfolio using Mahara. It covers the key features of Mahara that will help you set up your customized digital portfolio and display the artefacts in your preferred way allowing contribution from selected users only.

What you will learn

Create folders of your self-produced materials in a private area within Mahara, just like on your own computer, with an easy file search facility Create a variety of journals and plans in Mahara ñ facilitating your own action research and experiential learning journey Make an impressive online profile and digital resume using Mahara profile fields and tailor your own profile view Create scores of new web pages or mini-websites (collections of pages) entirely from scratch and customize each of them to allow much more flexibility and control over who sees what and when Set an environment to receive public or private feedback on your pictures, videos, and articles Connect with other Mahara users and get social: discuss topics of common interest in forums and share views with each other in collectively-owned web pages Manage different groups of learners within Mahara, tutor them and lock-down their work from further editing if you need to Customize and administer your Mahara site to your own preferences using a number of configuration settings for easy administration