Dominique-Alain is a learning technologist, Mahara and Moodle consultant, and teacher in the Gymnase de Nyon, a secondary school near Lake Geneva in Switzerland. He is very active in developing new dimensions to teaching and learning. He defines himself as a 'techno sceptic', by which he means that technology without pedagogy and a real interest in human learning process is useless.
He is very involved as a Mahara and Moodle advocate and belongs to the French community of translators for both products, as well as leading the Mahara French community. He has been awarded "Mahara 1.4 Release crew" member by Catalyst, the Mahara core developers, for his help on this project.
For about four years, Dominique-Alain has been travelling worldwide Australia (Estplan, The Australian National University), Tunisia, France, Germany, UK (Moodlemoot and Maharamoot) to provide consulting and giving talks on eLearning, lifelong learning, and ePortfolio. For about five years he is a technology enhanced learning lecturer at the Teacher School of Canton Vaud, a one semester course on web 2.0, ePortfolio and reflexion on how/if technology should be use in schools.
He is now studying toward a PhD in eLearning. During his free time, Dominique-Alain likes water sports (sailing, swimming), golf, and walking through the Swiss vineyards, and when is he not talking about Mahara he loves to share his knowledge of Swiss wine with anyone. Come and drink a glass of Chasselat with him if you are passing by.
This is his third book he reviewed for Packt Pub, but not the last one.
Heinz Krettek is a German teacher at a school for vocational education. He studied business science and sports. His main job is to prepare socioeconomically deprived students for lifelong learning. In 2006, he discovered the Portfolio work and began to translate the German langpack for Mahara. The first translations for Mahara 0.6 were published on his own Moodle site. Soon after Nigel McNie installed a git repository, the actual files were published in the Mahara git. He has just finished the translation for the Mahara 1.4 release.
He has organized several education and training sessions for teachers and was a speaker at the German MoodleMoot. In 2010, Heinz started a part-time online study for eEducation at FernUni Hagen (Germany). He publishes postings about ePortfolio and related topics at http://ewiesion.com.
He lives with his wife and four kids in the Black Forest. In his spare time, Heinz enjoys the three M's Mahara, Moodle, and marathons. He has run the New York Marathon. His motto is who finished a marathon will struggle all problems in school ;-)
Samantha Moss has a keen interest in how technology can enhance the teaching and learning experience for all in higher education. She works within the Learning Technology Unit at Southampton Solent University in the UK, a team that assists the staff and students in the development and use of eLearning tools and materials. She has been part of many internal projects that look into the potential uses of Mahara to promote personal development and career planning as well as the creation of online portfolios of work for 'self-promotion'. Samantha has presented Solent's work on Mahara at various conferences including the UK MoodleMoot 2010 and Mahara UK 2010.