Book Image

Mahara 1.4 Cookbook

Book Image

Mahara 1.4 Cookbook

Overview of this book

Mahara is an e-portfolio system that allows you to build dynamic and engaging portfolios in no time. Use Mahara when applying for jobs, creating portfolios for certification and accreditation, for classroom projects, book reviews, to create your own social network and much more. This book will show you the many different ways in which you can use Mahara, and how to exploit the various components of Mahara. The Mahara 1.4 Cookbook will introduce you to features you probably have not explored, and show you how to use them in ways you probably had not considered. The book also provides guidance in the use of Gimp, Picasa, Audacity, Word and other programs that can be used to create artifacts. It will provide you with techniques for creating everything from dynamic and engaging web pages to complete projects, interactive groups, educational templates, and professional resume packages. By exploring the recipes in this book, you will learn how to use each of the various blocks and content areas including the resume sections, Journals, and plans. You will learn how to archive a portfolio, and set access levels. We will build an art gallery, a newspaper, use groups for collaboration and assessment, and use the Collections feature to build complex layered portfolios. You will also find recipes for building templates for standards-based report cards and teacher certification. The book is packed with ideas from the simple to the extremely advanced, but each idea is supported with step-by-step instructions that will make all of them seem easy.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Mahara 1.4 Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Chapter 1. Mahara for the Visual Arts

In this chapter, we will cover:

  • Uploading and sharing a single image

  • Protecting your opus

  • Making a photo journal using Picasa

  • Journaling a project from start to finish

  • Building a simple gallery

  • Using the Collections feature to build a gallery with an audio-guided tour

Introduction

In this chapter, we serve up several recipes for the visual arts, particularly studio arts and digital arts. Learning how to market yourself and showcase your work is part of being an artist (and making a living out of it). The recipes in this chapter are designed to get your creative juices flowing regarding how you can use Mahara to showcase your work. The recipes will not only provide you with some creative ways in which to display your work, but will help you protect your ownership as well.

We will use a few additional programs, freely available on the Internet, in setting up our displays. The audio recording program, Audacity, can be found at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. We will use it to create a guided tour of a gallery. Some of the recipes will require you to create and use an account on Picasa, a free image repository program hosted by Google at https://picasaweb.google.com/. Unlike text, images can take up a lot of space on a server and, consequently, storage space can be a problem. In addition to providing you with more space, Picasa gives you more control over how visitors access your images, in particular, blocking their ability to download images in their original size.

Finally, we will learn about the various ways in which you can establish usage rights. We will explore the Creative Commons License and how to apply it. We will also learn how to add a © to the work for which you wish to retain full rights. So, let's get creating.