Book Image

Mahara ePortfolios: Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Mahara ePortfolios: Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Mahara ePortfolios Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

About the Authors

Richard Hand graduated with a first class honors degree in Computer Science from the University of Bristol in 2008 and now works full time as a frontend web developer and consultant.

Richard has worked with Mahara since joining TDM (http://tdm/info) in 2008, being responsible for management, configuration, hosting, and training. He has also developed on a range of open source software solutions including Drupal, Joomla!, and Moodle.

Thomas W. Bell has completed higher education in Environmental Sciences and he has a passion and enthusiasm for IT. Thomas is all about getting involved with the latest tools to improve the use of resources, communication with one another, and our role in developing our earth sustainably.

Thomas follows his Environmental education with a commitment to sustainability in all walks of life, both personal and business. He is actively thinking of ways to improve processes, procedures, software and so on, to improve efficiency and therefore, sustainability.

He is currently developing efficient use of technology in the apprenticeship delivery of the Wyre Academy, including use of cutting-edge tablets, signature capture, and fully implemented cutting-edge LMS solutions.

Thomas has been working with IT company TDM - which delivers e-Learning content, codeline development, training, and bespoke corporate branding - for over two years and is directly involved in the implementation and delivery of a new IT apprenticeships scheme through the TDM Wyre Academy. See http://opensourcesoftwareservices.com or http://www.wyreacademy.com.

Thomas has been regularly training groups in Mahara ePortfolios, TotaraLMS, Joomla!, and Moodle for over two years.

Derrin Kent (www.derr.in) loves personalized learning and open source software. Derrin has been working with Mahara since its version 0. He is MD of The Development Manager Ltd. (www.TDM.co).

www.TDM.co is a company who speaks six European languages fluently and who proudly runs a range of symbiotic business operations including:

  • www.OssServices.com: Professional Codeline Development, Web/Instructional Design, and Managed Services for open source softwares including Mahara and TotaraLMS

  • www.WyreAcademy.com: ICT Professional Talent Management, Short Courses, and Apprenticeships — all via Blended Learning, using TotaraLMS for Apprenticeships (specialist distro) and Mahara

  • www.FolioFor.Me: An online ePortfolio built upon Mahara

  • www.UK-LPI.org: The Linux Professional Institute Master Affiliate for the UK and Ireland

  • www.CloudNOVA.net: High availability open source software hosting