Mahara thoughts

Mahara eportfolios

Eportfolios at Perins School• Used to assess Transform courses through PLTS• Used as “evidence sites” for ICT Fitness• Used with new Flipped course in Science• Used in BTEC IT Units

Some Portfolio Examplesfrom around the Web…

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Moodle Integration

Moodle Integration• Integration of Portfolios through Moodle – Video explaining this from Mark Drechsler• Portfolios Assignments – Grading of portfolios in Moodle through Outcomes (transferrable to Mahara) – Grading of portfolios through Rubrics in Moodle (not transferrable)• Transferring of resources from Moodle to Mahara via – Forums (including grades and comments) – Glossary (including grades and comments)

Good Links…

Recommended links• Great examples – https://mahara.org/newsletter• E-portfolios explained at Solent – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOFSrV3QOWM – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGTFDY1Cf64

Recommended links• Official Mahara Website (need username) – https://mahara.org• MoodleFairy talks about her use in school – http://www.moodleblog.net/2011/10/01/2-flavours- of-mahara-at-our-ladys-preston/• MaharaUK Conference 2012 - http://maharauk.org/

Pros and Cons (IMHO)…

Pros of Mahara• Looks like Facebook – good buy in• Students have personal and professional page• Personalised learning – students design page and choose best way to show evidence• Fairly easy to develop• Superb for peer evaluation• Great assessment features – eg star feature• Pages can be shared anonymously

Pros of Mahara• Can embed HTML – great for YouTube videos and Web 2.0 products• Encourages good planning and having sense of audience / what makes effective presentation• Not age dependant• Assignment links to Moodle (and Forums and Glossary – am sure more to come!)• Can be used in any subject and for other work eg CV, professional portfolio etc

Pros of Mahara• Can link pages through navigation menus• Open source – great community support• Good pedagogy! Encourages more independent learning and HOTS• Links to Google Docs (not sure Google Forms though?)• Single sign in with Moodle and can be used independently of VLE

Cons of Mahara• Front end looks a little old fashioned and clunky compared to Web 2.0 GUIs• Navigation to different parts can tricky• Some processes not hugely intuitive eg file uploads, page creation by dragging blocks, sharing page (or maybe its me!)• Page creation needs clear explanation• Doesn’t like Office 2010 files

Cons of Mahara• Students need to be good planners and have sense of effective presentation• Limited support and guidance for schools and few schools actually using it• Some issues with assignments that need developing (bugs with 1.4)• Adding images to site can be a pain (although encourages good IT skills)• Resizing of images/video to fit page layout

Cons of Mahara• Like all things, there is a process/method to be followed which sometime students don’t eg like giving titles to text/image boxes!

What’s new in v1.5?

Important New Stuff for v1.5• New themes for v1.5 including Primary• Drop down menu for navigation• Reusable text boxes• Better embedded support for voki, glogster, prezi etc• Multiple file uploads• Lots of bug fixes…

Get in touch…

Get in touch? Gideon Williams Director of e-learning Perins School E-mail: williams@perins.hants.sch.ukTwitter: @moodlegideon @gideonwilliams

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Mahara thoughts

by Gideon WIlliams on Jun 08, 2012

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