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Mahara ePortfolios: Beginner's Guide
Mahara ePortfolios: Beginner's Guide

Mahara ePortfolios: Beginner's Guide: Create your own ePortfolio and communities of interest within an educational and professional organization with this book and ebook

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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.

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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.

Who is this book for?

Pick up this book if you want to get started with Mahara. This book is for you if: You are an employee, student or other type of learner wanting to maintain online documentation of your projects and share it with a particular assessor/CPD Manager/teacher/trainer for feedback. You are a teacher or mentor wanting to set up an e-portfolio for your students or employees in order to encourage and advance personalized and reflective learning. You are a professional wanting to share your journals and project documents with your team by sharing your existing knowledge and creating new knowledge in communities of professional practice. You are a human resources professional who wants a software application which will enable your team to generate, capture and transfer tacit knowledge. No previous experience of Mahara is required.

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
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Length: 328 pages
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Table of Contents

7 Chapters
What can Mahara do for you? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Getting Started with Mahara Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Create and Collect Content Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Organize and Showcase your Portfolio Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Share and Network in Groups Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Course Groups and Other Roles in Mahara Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Mahara Extensions Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon 4.5
(2 Ratings)
5 star 50%
4 star 50%
3 star 0%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
DuchessJewell Jan 15, 2016
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Happy customer
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ghenrick Oct 31, 2012
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
The Packt Beginner's Guide books are just that, aimed at beginners and follow a philosophy of "Learn by doing: less theory, more results". So with that in mind, let's have a look at the book.This is the second edition of a book that was published over two years ago, bringing the content up to date and more relevant with the later Mahara versions.Chapter 1 - What can Mahara do for you?This chapter is a great on boarding to Mahara and ePortfolios and what it can be used to support in personalised learning, reflective learning and collaborative learning. The quiz about features was an interesting twist. It then brings the reader through 4 interesting case studies.Chapter 2 - Getting Started with MaharaI expected the chapter to explain how to install Mahara as most of the beginners guides do, however this chapter encourages the user to register at the demo Mahara website of the authors. This lets the user try out Mahara without having to go through installing it. It also provides info on some other sites the user could use. It walks the reader through all the basic aspects of Mahara in a nice step by step way.Chapter 3 - Create and Collect contentThis chapter really brings the reader to the next phase of using Mahara and ePortfolios, showing as it says how "Mahara replaces the USB Stick". Now I don't fully agree with that, but the authors do give good reasons for taking this view. It brings the reader through managing the files into and within Mahara, and introduces some other features.Chapter 4 - Organise and Showcase your PortfolioContent is great, but displaying and controlling the display is key and this chapter shows where Mahara is great at this and brings the reader through the key steps to achieve their goals. The tone and pace of this chapter is really excellent and the guidance and examples are very useful.Chapter 5 - Share and Network in GroupsOne area I really like Mahara for is the Group features. This chapter brings the reader into the world of Mahara groups and shows what they can do and use them for. This is a must-read chapter!Chapter 6 - Course Groups and Other Roles in MaharaAt this stage the reader has gone through all user related aspects of Mahara and this now focuses on the administrative areas of Mahara and what options are available there. This is an important chapter especially for those considering for their organisation rather than as an individual.Chapter 7 - Mahara ExtensionsAs with many open source systems, there are a number of plugin or extensions available for Mahara and this chapter introduces some of them to the reader and explains their usage.AppendicesThey are an interesting inclusion providing the user a Mahara Implementation pre-planner and a guide for installing Mahara.Some thoughtsOverall the book is a great introduction to using Mahara as an ePortfolio tool. So if you are looking for something in that area, this book is a good read!I did find the explanations to be clear and concise and provided a good balance of guidance and step by step information.I loved the cases studies and would have liked to see more.
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