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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Mahara is a user-centred environment with a permissions framework that enables different views of an e-portfolio to be easily managed. These views helps you display your artefacts – text files, spreadsheets, images, and videos – in a way you choose and to the people you want. You can also create online communities and social networks through groups, blogs, and forums.Being a novice, you will need a quick and easy implementation guide to set up your feature-rich digital portfolio.This book is your 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.This book will introduce to the exciting features of Mahara framework and help you develop a feature-rich e-portfolio for yourself. You will see how easily you can create folders, upload multiple files like journals, project documents, pictures, and videos and share them with your friends. You will learn to set up views of these files, making these visible to your chosen friends only. And then, you will allow people to give their inputs.You will learn to create blogs and forums and get connected to the rest of the world. Customization and administration of your Mahara site will become 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.
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Seitenzahl: 350
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010
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Table of Contents
Mahara 1.2 ePortfolios
Derrin Kent
Glenys Bradbury
Meg Kent
Richard Hand
Mahara 1.2 ePortfolios
Beginner's Guide
Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: February 2010
Production Reference: 1030210
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847199-06-5
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Authors
Derrin Michael Kent
Richard William Hand
Glenys Gillian Bradbury
Margaret Anne Kent
Reviewers
Alex Büchner
Heinz Krettek
Nigel McNie
Acquisition Editor
David Barnes
Development Editor
Ved Prakash Jha
Technical Editors
Bhupali Khule
Vinodhan Nair
Gaurav Datar
Mithun Sehgal
Conrad Neil Sardinha
Editorial Team Leader
Abhijeet Deobhakta
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Project Team Leader
Lata Basantani
Project Coordinator
Rajashree Hamine
Proofreader
Chris Smith
Production Coordinators
Shantanu Zagade
Aparna Bhagat
Cover Work
Shantanu Zagade
Aparna Bhagat
About the Authors
Derrin Kent (http://derr.in) graduated in Education Studies in 1988 and has worked in the Education Sector in the UK and Overseas ever since, gaining a Master's Level Diploma in Adult Teaching from the University of Cambridge in 1995. Derrin has been an amateur website designer for over 10 years and has worked with Moodle since version 1.5. Derrin has already worked as the Technical Reviewer for two books on Moodle published by Packt.
A big Linux fanboy, Derrin set up an open-source software hosting, configuring, and training business (http://tdm.info) in 2007 and qualified formally as a Linux-Certified Professional in 2008.
TDM became the second official Mahara Partner Organization in the UK in 2008 and now professionally host, configure, and train both end users (learners) and software administrators (geeks) to work with Mahara sites.
Derrin believes strongly in the value of social-constructionist learning approaches and is a committed advocate of learner-owned data and of Portfolio-based learning approaches.
Derrin speaks Spanish at home with his beautiful Peruvian wife, Ely, and his two wonderful bilingual kids, Salvador and Micaela.
Thanks to all three of you for your patience with me and my work-life imbalance, and thanks also to the TDM Team for the same.
Richard Hand is a Mahara platform manager, module developer, and theme/configuration designer for TDM (http://tdm.info). Richard also supports and develops for other open-source software platforms including Moodle, Drupal, and Joomla. He graduated with a first class honors degree in Computer Science from the University of Bristol in 2008 and won a national (UK) award for "Best Website Design" for one of his TDM Joomla sites in 2009 (selected from 2000+ competitor sites).
I would like to thank David Hoyos for all the work he put into the illustrations for this book.
Glenys Bradbury is a Cambridge University graduate and is now a Prince2-qualified Project Manager and an LSIS E-guide who works as a Mahara (and Moodle) learning-designer, site-administrator, and end-user trainer for TDM (http://tdm.info). Glen has extensive working experience as a trainer and manager in both educational and business environments. She is a friendly and sensitive change-manager who really knows how to make a personal development planning / knowledge management implementation process come to life.
Meg Kent has worked continuously as a corporate manager and director in a variety of Work-Based Learning contexts since the late 1980s. She is now a Mahara (and Moodle) learning-designer and end-user trainer for TDM (http://tdm.info). Also a Work-Based Learning assessor in her own right, Meg successfully blends support for individuals' achievement of government-funded qualifications alongside the development of their practical Web 2.0 skills.
About the Reviewers
Alex Büchner is the co-founder and technical lead of Synergy Learning (www.synergy-learning.com), the UK's leading Moodle and Mahara partner. He has been working with ePortfolio systems and virtual learning environments of all shapes and sizes since their advent on the educational landscape. Services offered include Mahara and Moodle hosting, support, training, and branding.
Alex holds a PhD in Computer Science and an MSc in Software Engineering. He has authored over 50 international publications, including Moodle Administration published by Packt Publishing, and is a frequent speaker on Moodle, Mahara, and related open-source technologies.
Nigel McNie began his career in free software when he was just 17, working part time as an intern at Catalyst IT. His first contribution to the free software world was the popular GeSHi syntax highlighter, which can be found to this day highlighting source code on sites such as Wikipedia. In 2005, he dropped out of university to work full time, and began on the Mahara project in 2006. Now, Nigel leads development on the project, and has designed and co-written large parts of the codebase, including the Views framework and LEAP2A support.
Catalyst IT has been a top place to work these last few years. I know few companies that trust their developers so much to do the right thing, nor who understand the benefits of free software. Keep up the good fight, guys.
I would like to thank my fellow developers for all the time, sweat, and blood that have gone into Mahara currently, and for supporting me in rough times - in particular, Penny Leach and Richard Mansfield. You guys believe in Mahara, and as a result routinely go beyond the call.
Finally, thanks to the Mahara community: contributors to mahara.org, partners, right through to Richard Wyles at the top. You guys are amazing. You buy into the vision for Mahara, and are putting in the hard yards to make it happen. Wherever you are, I owe you a beer. Especially if you're running Mahara on PostgreSQL.
Heinz Krettek is a German teacher at a school for vocational education. He studied business sciences 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 organized several education and training sessions for teachers and was speaker at the German moodlemoots. Since 2008 Heinz has been partner of a company that offers LMS hosting and Mahara hosting. His company is the official German Mahara Partner.
He lives with his wife and the four kids in the Black Forest. In his spare time Heinz prefers the 3 M's: Mahara, Moodle, and marathon. He finished the New York Marathon. His motto is: who finished a marathon will struggle all problems in school ;-)
Preface
Mahara is a user-centered environment with a permission framework that enables different views of an ePortfolio to be easily managed. These views help you display your artefacts in a way you choose and to the people you want. You can also create online communities and social networks through groups, blogs, and forums.
Being a new user, you will need a quick and easy implementation guide to set up your feature-rich digital portfolio.
This is your step-by-step guide to building your own impressive educational or professional ePortfolio using Mahara. The book covers the key features of Mahara that will help you set up your customized digital portfolio and display your own stuff in your chosen way allowing contribution from selected users only.
This book will introduce you to the exciting features of the Mahara framework and help you develop a feature-rich ePortfolio for yourself. You will see how easily you can upload multiple files like journals, project documents, pictures, or videos, and share them with your friends. You will also learn to set up views of these files in easy-to-create web pages, making these visible to your chosen ones only, and learn to allow people to give their inputs.
You will learn to create blogs and forums and get connected to the rest of the world. Imagine how good you will feel when you see your knowledge, success, and ideas going live and available to your chosen audiences. This book is for you—go grab it!
What this book covers
Chapter 1, What can Mahara do for me?, we look at what an ePortfolio essentially is and the possible uses of Mahara. We also look at some real-life Mahara sites and learn what is so special about the Mahara ePortfolio.
Chapter 2, Getting Started with Mahara, looks at how to register onto a demonstration Mahara site, logging in, and navigating around Mahara. We also look at creating our own profile page and using the Mahara text editor.
Chapter 3, Add Files and Blogs to Your Portfolio, we look at how to add files, folders, and blogs to our Portfolio. We will also learn about how to tag things in our Portfolio.
Chapter 4, Views, covers how to create and edit a View, as well as controlling who sees the View and when they see it.
Chapter 5, Working in Groups and Interacting with Friends, we will cover creating groups, discussing Group Types, Forums and discussions, Group Views and Files, and making friends.
Chapter 6, Site Settings and Exporting Your Portfolio, looks at setting our preferences, managing our notifications, the watchlist, adjusting our activity preferences, and exporting our portfolio.
Chapter 7, Institution Administrators, Staff Members, and Group Tutors, covers roles that an Institutional Administrator performs. We will also look at a special type of Group called a Course Group and the two types of roles associated with it.
Appendix A, Mahara Implementation Pre-Planner, we will discuss some of the important questions and suggestions your organization will need to address, if you want to quickly and successfully get your ePortfolio system up, live and running.
Appendix B, Installing Mahara, covers the installation of Mahara, along with the requirements for installation.
Appendix C, Pop Quiz Answers, contains the answers for the pop quiz questions.
What you need for this book
All you will need to get started with this book is access to the internet via a web browser. You will be able to use the demonstration Mahara to go through the examples in the book (http://maharaforbeginners.tdm.info) but it would be a useful if you had your own Mahara website in operation too (see Appendix B for installation details).
Who this book is for
This book is for learners who want to maintain online documentation of their projects and share it with a particular teacher or trainer for feedback, educators who want to set up an ePortfolio for their students in order to encourage and advance personalized and reflective learning, or professionals who want to share journals and project documents with their team, capturing and sharing their existing knowledge and creating new knowledge in communities of professional practice.
Conventions
In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.
To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:
Time for action—Heading
Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed by:
What Just Happened?
This section explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.
You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:
Pop quiz— Heading
These are short multiple choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding.
Have a go hero—Heading
These set practical challenges and give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.
You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Note
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Errata
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Questions
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Chapter 1. What Can Mahara Do for Me?
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 you have to use it and you just need to get a sense of what Mahara is all about?
In subsequent chapters of this book, we will be digging into the nitty-gritty of getting your Mahara up and running and then making it practically work for you as a learner or as a Mahara Staff Member. This particular book is not specifically pitched at helping Mahara Site Administrators. Therefore, before we start getting down to the practical basics of Mahara, we need you to try to understand the big picture of what Mahara is about.
In this chapter, we will:
So, let's get on with it!
Portfolios go electronic
You have been learning things since the day you were born. I have just gloried at my little four-year-old boy's first-ever picture of a cowboy on a horse (it's great!) and I will always remember the wooden toy truck I myself made in my woodwork class when I was a teenager. I also proudly remember the written design paper I had to write for my exams about how I actually made that wooden truck, but I have now lost that design paper, I have no idea where it has gone. Today, I am heavily involved with online distance learning, more specifically ePortfolios, and rarely a day goes when I don't learn something new.
Now, the thing is, all I have now 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 sixteen 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 were really impressed with my wooden truck and wanted to know how to make it, so they could make one too. So, maybe I decided I was going to create 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 really liked the truck, and showed it to 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 that 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 learn collaboratively and reflectively. 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 along with developing complex social networking skills. The teachers were all happy that this was taking place in a safe "walled garden" where only people to whom the school had given permission could access our work. 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 a wooden truck.
However, this is all pure 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.
Towards an ePortfolio-enabled future
I am now, however, a fully ePortfolio-enabled-Dad and I am therefore, this afternoon, going to help my son (Salvador) to upload that picture of a cowboy on a horse. In future, he can share that picture with his friends, and possibly with some other junior artistic talents, online. He is about to embark upon a lifelong learning journey, and now he (with a little help from Dad), can keep a record of his learning into posterity.
I, myself, also see the need to store and share the knowledge I am gathering about my professional life online. I want to work in a community of professionals (like yourself) using ePortfolios, who I can buzz with, share ideas with, and grow with. I want to engage with a professional community who I can give to and learn from. I want to keep my personal reflections and files to myself sometimes, to share some with my colleagues, and some to share with the rest of the world. I wish to create pages as I see fit, not according to some pre-designed fixed template. I want to fully use my creative skills to design pages that I feel fit with my personal and professional style. I cannot do these things with Facebook or Beebo; I need the enhanced functionality and privacy that a socially interactive ePortfolio such as Mahara uses.
For both Salvador's needs and my own, I am going to use Mahara.
Ways of using Mahara
We've already started to look at how Mahara could be used for school children and professionally. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Mahara can be used in lots of different ways towards lots of different ends. Here are just a few different examples:
The list goes on...
In this book, we want you to look at the many ways you can use Mahara to fit your own specific situation. To help you do this, we will often be illustrating the different things you can do with Mahara by using any of these three imaginary case studies.
Case study one: Punam from Pennytown Primary
Punam, who is a teacher at Pennytown Primary, is taking her 9-year old students through a project on the Tudors. She is running on an institutional-themed Mahara that is set up on "Schools Online", a large, county-wide Mahara implementation for school teachers, who are working in a fictional English county called Rurishire.
Punam will be helping her students to work as a class group in order to gather files and discuss their learning. She doesn't just want them to upload a whole load of files, she wants them to organize files and data in a meaningful way, just like a paper-based project. This will mean she wants her students to create views in smaller working groups for their class project. She likes the idea of smaller working groups as this will allow her students to start working collaboratively. She likes the fact that Mahara facilitates this by allowing you both to set up different groups and to create a collaboratively created "group view".
Tip
What does View mean?
View is the Mahara word for a web page that we create ourselves in order to display our information. I like the word View for this because it tells me that I am creating a web page for people to look at (a nice view) AND it also suggests to me that I am expected to express my ideas and opinions (that is, my views) on this type of web page.
Some of her student's parents have come up to her and expressed concerns about online safety. One of their children has been the victim of cyber-bullying. She is quite happy that Mahara addresses this concern as, unlike Facebook, the only people that have access to the site are those that have been given permission by the school. The local education authority has set a policy that any adult who has access to this site must have passed a police check. If there are any concerns about other children, she can request that the administrator accesses all the views and forum posts so that she can find out who was responsible, and request suspension of the user if appropriate. She can happily reassure the parents that this is a walled garden site where their children are safe. There is even a facility for the learners themselves to Report Objectionable Material to the administrators should they stumble across any.
Case study two: Janet Norman from Pharmaceuticals International Inc. (PI Inc.)
Janet is a learning technologist who holds overarching responsibility for PI Inc.'s international corporate university. Each country, indeed, each and every branch that she represents has its own local learning agenda.
As a learning technologist, she wants to encourage informal, personalized, and reflective learning. She knows that spending time encouraging reflection and CPD (continuous professional development) helps to:
However, Janet's main focus is implementing Mahara to facilitate informal, international knowledge transfer processes. She wants to spend some time setting up different types of groups. She can see the benefit of setting up groups to work on a variety of research projects being carried out throughout the organization. She is hopeful that the group members are going to make use of Mahara's blogging features to keep everyone up-to-date with their particular projects. There are currently three pilot studies being carried out in England, Peru, and Spain for a new cancer drug and she wants these three research groups to collaborate together and discuss early findings. She also wants to set up some international groups of practice and collaborate together in the hope that this will lead to some useful organizational innovations. She also wants to set up some groups, that select individuals can access from outside the company, to bring in some fresh ideas and perspectives, whilst also contributing to the wider pharmaceutical community.
Tip
What does Group mean?
This is Mahara's word for an online community that users can either:
You can use groups in a variety of ways, but they are predominately used in Mahara to develop, stimulate, and support both social and learning activities in a social networking context.
PI Inc. are therefore running their own large international Mahara implementation with a range of their own institutions. Janet's people will be SHARING their knowledge. PI Inc. will be CAPTURING their knowledge before they leave. And, by engaging in this process, Janet's staff members will be CREATING new and innovative knowledge that PI Inc. can make use of as they expand into the future.
Case study three: Neil from Training 4 Work
Neil trains and assesses learners who are taking national vocational qualifications with a private training provider called Training 4 Work. He is helping 16-19 year olds to gain their vocational qualifications in electrical engineering. Although Training 4 Work only has about fifteen people in its staff, they have installed their own organizational Mahara because they like to have control over their own site.
Neil is also keen to use the resume-builder feature of Mahara. He has a number of links with local businesses for work placements, and he prides himself on the high percentage of learners that go on to full-time positions. He knows if he can get all his learners to input all their information into the resume builder and create an online resume, not only will this make matching his learners to work placements easier, this will also really impresses prospective employers.
Neil knows that, at the moment, his learners' files and evidence are stored all over the place in a variety of locations. Some of the homework is currently handed in as paper assignments. Some assessors have video and audio evidence stored in their camcorders or on their laptops, with hand-written notes. Some other parts of the work that his learners have done are stored on the Training 4 Work desktops up in the computer room. His e-mail inbox is always stuffed with e-mails from students sending him files with huge attachments to check. Newer students want to submit evidence in an ePortfolio as they did at Uppertown Secondary School. Finally, when he makes on-site visits he finds his students have often forgotten to bring their evidence with them, leading to yet another wasted trip! Assessing has become a complete nightmare! He spends more time actually trying to find the evidence than he does teaching and supporting his students.
Neil says he will make extensive use of Mahara's artefacts feature. This will allow him to get the students to organize their "digital stuff" (or artefacts) into one central location where they can then share them with him, verifiers, and also other students easily, using views. As it will be accessible anywhere anytime there is Internet access, students now can't forget or lose their work. He has also been set up as a Mahara Staff Member (more on this in Chapter 7), which will allow him to force his learners into a Controlled Group—into which the learners will submit views evidencing their learning, which can then be formally assessed. Neil will, of course, set up a template view for learners to copy and build their evidence upon. The learners will not be able to edit their submitted views again until Neil releases them with his feedback. Neil needs this sort of control because his accrediting body and external verifiers require him to have it.
Tip
What does Artefact mean?
Artefact is the Mahara word for a bit of digital "stuff"—such as files, blogs, and profile or resume information. We control other people's access to our stuff by deciding for ourselves who can see the artefacts we choose to display in our own views.
Neil can't wait to start using Mahara! It will make his life so much easier. He can give online coaching as and when needed, there will be no more forgotten files and wasted trips, and most importantly his students will learn more—and learn to reflect more, as this will help them not only to gain their all-important qualifications but also to become more valuable employees.
