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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
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.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011
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Table of Contents
Mahara 1.4 Cookbook
Mahara 1.4 Cookbook
Copyright © 2011 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 author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and 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 of 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: September 2011
Production Reference: 1080911
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-849515-06-1
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Tom Glasspool ( <[email protected]> )
Credits
Author
Ellen Marie Murphy
Reviewers
Dominique-Alain JAN
Heinz Krettek
Samantha Moss
Acquisition Editor
Sarah Cullington
Development Editor
Pallavi Iyenger
Technical Editors
Joyslita D'Souza
Arun Nadar
Copy Editors
Brandt D'Mello
Leonard D'Silva
Laxmi Subramanian
Project Coordinator
Jovita Pinto
Proofreader
Aaron Nash
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Production Coordinator
Shantanu Zagade
Cover Work
Shantanu Zagade
About the Author
Ellen Marie Murphy is a curriculum and learning technologies specialist with over 16 years of experience in education. She is an avid proponent of open source software. Her first Moodle and Mahara implementations were during her tenure at The Sage Colleges, where she was employed as Director of Instructional Technologies. More recently she served as the Director of Learning Technologies and Online Education at Plymouth State University, and Higher Education Liaison to the New Hampshire Society for Technology in Education, where she was actively engaged with all levels of education from K to 20. Currently, she serves as the Director of Online Curriculum at the State University of New York at Empire State College.
In 1998, while teaching at a middle school in Vermont, she was introduced to the concept of ePortfolios and has strongly supported the use of ePortfolios in teaching and learning since. She recently hosted a New Hampshire Statewide K-20 ePortfolio Day and hopes it will become an annual event. Additionally, she is a regular presenter at numerous educational conferences and Moodle Moots. Her current focus is on the development of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and furthering the cause of openness in education.
Acknowledgement
I've received a tremendous amount of encouragement and support during the writing of this book and would like to thank the following individuals in particular:
My family my mother and father as well as Nick, Melanie, Keller, Maeven, Kateri, Maria, Anna, Charity, and Krystal, whose pictures and work appear throughout this book.
A friend and colleague John Harris, who installed and supported one of the Mahara instances in which I built portfolios for this book.
And the following wonderful educators in the State of New Hampshire, who provided me with questions to answer and an audience on which to test some of my recipes:
About the Reviewers
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.
I would like to thank both Roger Emery and Dr. Barbara Lee for originally asking me to get involved with the various Solent Mahara projects, as well as my manager Steve Hogg for allowing me the time to review this book.
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Preface
Mahara is an open source ePortfolio 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, to support teaching and learning, for classroom projects, to create your own social network, and much more. This book will show you the many different ways in which you can use and exploit the various components of Mahara.
The Mahara 1.4 Cookbook will introduce you to features you may not have 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, MS 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, showcase portfolios, 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 and 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, college applications, 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.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Mahara for the Visual Arts, explores the use of Mahara for reflecting on process, and demonstrates various methods for showcasing work. Techniques for customizing image displays and protecting access to images are also covered.
Chapter 2, Literature and Writing, focuses on the uses of Mahara for language acquisition and for showcasing various forms of writing. Recipes include the use of various types of journals, the creation of a small poetry book, and the use of reflections in learning a second language. The chapter also includes a short tutorial on using GIMP for creating illustrations.
Chapter 3, The Professional Portfolio, provides ideas and templates for building resumes, resume packages, and portfolios for Promotion and Tenure. The recipes range from a very basic resume page, to a highly complex portfolio containing collections within collections.
Chapter 4, Working with Groups, takes an in-depth look at Groups, one of Mahara's most powerful features. Recipes include the building of a newspaper with student columnists, web pages that feature student work, and techniques for building templates.
Chapter 5, The Primary Education Portfolio, is comprehensive and packed full of ideas; all readers will benefit from the varied and creative uses of Mahara in this chapter. An example of these is the international project recipe that explains the technique for adding a banner to a Mahara page. Other examples are the use of plans for book reports, and the use of Secret URLs for setting access levels.
Chapter 6, The Social Portfolio, is simply a fun chapter that explores how to "pimp" your Profile page. Add a slideshow, write on a wall, add a counter so you can see how many visitors you get, or add a Twitter feed. Regardless of what else you choose to share, everyone in your Mahara instance can see your profile page. Learn how to make it much more reflective of who you are.
Chapter 7, The College Application Portfolio, talks about building a college entrance art portfolio, and the Common Application and its various supplements. Recipes follow the standard application procedures. The chapter also includes the use of code for creating tables in Mahara. This code is available for download from the Packt website. With modification, the code could be used for additional purposes in the ePortfolio process.
Chapter 8, Certification and Accreditation Portfolio for Higher Education, examines the various ways Mahara can be used by Colleges and Universities for the ePortfolios they use to meet certification and accreditation requirements. Since accreditation standards vary across disciplines and regions, the ECIS International Teacher portfolio is used to provide ideas for the development of other similar portfolios.
What you need for this book
This book uses Mahara out of the box that is, without plugins. Some of the chapters, however, do use additional freeware as well as open source programs and applications. These include Audacity, GIMP, KompoZer, and Picasa.
Who this book is for
Anyone interested in using an ePortfolio or in helping others build one teachers, professors, students, guidance counselors, advisors, mentors, career counselors, and individuals interested in building an online resume and/or portfolio.
Conventions
In this book, you will 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: "The new file will appear in the same location as the original file, but will have a .zip extension".
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: "In the section labeled Journal click in the small bubble next to My Research Paper".
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Customer support
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.
Downloading the example code
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Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books maybe a mistake in the text or the code we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/support, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded on our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.
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Questions
You can contact us at <[email protected]> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.
Chapter 1. Mahara for the Visual Arts
In this chapter, we will cover:
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.
Uploading and sharing a single image
This is one of the simplest recipes in this cookbook, but it can serve a variety of uses. We are simply going to do as the title says, namely, "upload and share a single image". This recipe can serve as a practice for other recipes, or it can be used to create a splash page in a collection (for example, it can be used with the recipe: Using the Collections feature to build a gallery with an audio-guided tour).
Getting ready
You should have the image you wish to use saved to your computer or some other accessible storage device.
How to do it...
How it works...
Tip
If the Block Title is deleted for the An Image block, the words [No title] will appear above the image while you are editing the page, but only during editing. In the actual display view, there will be no title. To see how this appears, you can click the Display my Page link in the upper right-hand corner of the page. It will show you how your page will look when it is not in edit mode.
There's more...
Mahara resizes large images to fit the page; however, the larger the image the more time it will take to load (the time it takes for the image to display when someone first comes to your page). This can be helped by setting the display width to no greater than 1000.
When you click and drag the An Image block into your page and when the An Image: Configuration window opens, you will see an area at the very bottom labeled Width. This is where you type the display width. It's that simple! If you have already added the image you can go back and change this setting. Open the page and then click the Edit option in the upper right-hand corner. Click the small editing icon in the upper-right corner of the block that contains your image. This will open the settings and you will be able to set the width.
Note
If an image is only going to be displayed on the Internet, it does not need to have a resolution higher than 96ppi. When an image is going to be printed, it is often set to 300ppi or more. The higher the resolution, the longer the image will take to load. The file size also increases significantly as the pixel density increases. To check the ppi value of an image, open it in an image editing program like GIMP (see Chapter 2, Literature and Writing). You can also use the Preview program on a Mac, or the Paint program on a PC, to resize an image.
See also
Protecting your opus
The term "all rights reserved" means that no one, except the owner, has the right to publish, distribute, or modify a piece of work, without getting permission from the owner. An international agreement, known as the Bern Convention, ensures that published works automatically provide these rights to their owner whether there is an accompanying statement to that effect or not. Most artists add the statement, though, to remind people of those rights. It isn't always in your best interest, however, to retain "all rights reserved". For example, you may wish to allow others to distribute your work freely, as long as they give you credit for it, thereby increasing the number of people who become familiar with your work.
Since you will be publishing some of the work in your portfolio on the web, you will want to consider what kinds of rights you wish to establish and then put a statement to that effect on your work. Creative Commons licensing will allow you to do this more easily. In this recipe, we will learn how to add a Creative Commons license to your work, as well as a few other ways to protect your creations.
Here's a general description of a Creative Commons license (from the Creative Commons website http://creativecommons.org/choose/): "With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit and only on the conditions you specify…"
Getting ready
In the Pages section of the Portfolio tab find the page you'd like to add the license to and open it by clicking on the name of the page. To begin editing, click the Edit option in the upper right-hand corner.
How to do it...
How it works...
Visitors who click on the Creative Commons License you applied to your work will be taken to a site on the Web that explains what your license means.
There's more...
Maybe, though, you want to keep "all rights reserved" and you wish to add an indication of that to your page:
If that is the case, follow these steps:
Adding copyright to the image description
Most of the artifacts you add to a page (for example, documents, images, and so on) have a Details page associated with them. Visitors to your portfolio will find the link to the Details page under the artifact. If they click the link to view the details, they will also have the option of downloading the artifact. While you may not want them to have this access, there is currently no way to prevent an individual with access from downloading the artifact. To add a © symbol to an artifact, so that it appears on the detail page, simply add the © symbol in the area for the description:
To add a Description to an artifact you've already uploaded to your files, click on the Content tab and then Files. Find the file you want to add the description to, and select the pencil tool next to it. The area will expand and you can add the description as shown in the image above. Click Save changes.
