Learn Mahara

Wednesday 27th & Thursday 28th March 2013

eLearning Alliance

Today's Session

•Introducing Mahara ePortfolios – what, who and why?

•Building your own Mahara ePortfolio

•Collaborating within the room

•Sharing your content

•The end? You and your ePortfolio don’t have to break up!

Today's Session contd..

•The Mahara Community, be a member

•Mahara Mobile!

•Mahara for assessment and review (Day 2)

•The end? You and your ePortfolio don’t have to break up!

Learn Mahara Site: http://moodle.forthvalley.ac.uk/mahara

Create a Learner Profile

Create a learner (teacher) profile that contains the following things: (Portfolio menu>Pages>Profile Page)

•A two-column layout;

•A text box that begins 'I enjoy teaching most when...‘;

•A text box that summarises your current role (subjects, year levels etc.);

•A text box with some information about yourself

•A photo of something related to an interest of yours.

Definition

An ePortfolio provides an online environment which can be used by students and staff to demonstrate their learning, skills and development and record their achievements over time to selected audience(s).

“ePortfolios are learners own stories of what they know”

Blog (Journal) entry #1

•Go into your content area and add a new journal called ‘LearnMahara'. You will use this blog to reflect on what you are learning about Mahara;

•Add a new journal entry answering the following question: "How can you use journals with your Learners?"

•Now we need to add your journey to your profile. Go into your Profile view and add a ‘Journal post block’. This will put a single blog post onto your profile view.

Tip! You can have more than 1 Journal

Use social networking tools

To familiarise yourself with the social networking side of Mahara, complete the following activity: •Search for and find a 'friend' in the room;

•Send a friend request;

   Extended Activity: Create a group using your own example and invite the room to be members.

Reflection

Discuss: How is an [e]portfolio different from a folder?

“Knowing about things……Knowing yourself”

Group PagesExamples

• Before you work in your groups, its always useful to see some great examples of what can be done with pages.

• Pupils from Perins School Aged 11 -14

• Barry Frame – Sound Production Student

• Emma Glacken - Lecturer

• Kim Reid – Core Skills Co-ordinator

The great paper airplane competition! Facilitated Activity

Please work in groups to create an eportfolio showcasing your attempt to create the perfect paper airplane.

Choose a name with your group and assign 1 member of the group to be group administrator, this person will create the group. This person shall be ‘teacher’.

Agree how you will organise your group portfolio’s file area, having an organised file structure now, will make creating your pages much easier.

Tip! Being a member of your learners group lets you contribute, feedback and interact as a peer.

Tip! Your OWN portfolio areas are private unless you share.

The great paper airplane competition contd…..

Your group portfolio must include the following things during the construction of your paper airplane: • A text box describing the steps required to construct the

perfect paper dart;• At least three images, outlining the stages of development;• An 'embedded media' video of the dart launch;• A Youtube/Teachertube video related to paper darts;• Share your group page with the room;Email a secret URL to another member of the room

Extended Activity: Use the external content block to embed media from another site. E.g. soundcloud, flickr

Leaving feedback

You can leave feedback on pages and content within the pages. This can be public or private. Go to a different groups page and give them some feedback on their view…

Journal (Blog) entry #2

Go back to your LearnMahara Journal and add a new entry, answering this question: "How can you use multimedia in e-portfolios with Learners?"

“We do not learn from our experiences…. We learn from

reflecting on our experiences” - Dewey

Journal (Blog) entry #3.

Write a new Journal (Blog) entry answering this question: "What is one thing you can do over the next two weeks with e-portfolios?"

Tip! You can customise your Mahara site to rename terms you are more comfortable with. E.g. Change references to ‘Journal’ to

the more common ‘Blog’

Summarise & Possible Day 2 items…Group Work

The next slides are flexible to whether we move to Day 2 or depending on time, Day 1

We will discuss and decide as a group

Summarise our day

Open DiscussionWhat have we learned about using Mahara ePortfolio as an effective addition to our learning and teaching tools?

Activity and Open DiscussionThrow ideas about the room of how you could introduce the use of ePortfolios in your own institution and strategies you would use to engage staff and learners.

Forth Valley College have successfully embedded the use of a rebranded Mahara within their teaching departments, service departments and as a platform to deliver information to learners before they start college, and after.

Any questions are now welcome

Don’t leave me behind!

Something that we have spent our precious time on is worthwhile, but only if there is a purpose for doing it…...

Mahara ePortfolio’s are sustainable, they can be joined to the hip of learners throughout their whole journey. Leaving College and taking their ePortfolio to Uni, or to potential employees for a post in their career they have chosen and as they continue to learn, their ePortfolio can securely keep the ‘digital diary’.

Joint Class Activity

Using the memory stick issued to you, the room will work through the process together of exporting your ePortfolio and with this you can install Mahara on your pc at home or work and continue using. Absolutely no time spent is wasted.

Working with Templates

The process for setting up a template is:

1.Create a ‘page’ in your Portfolio menu>pages area that you would like to act as the template, then once your page is finished; 2.Allow copying by clicking into Portfolio menu>share and clicking on the edit access icon (KEY) for sharing options. 

You will tick the box to allow sharing as shown.

References and RecognitionThank you to Dawn Corley for sharing the wonderful quotes

Thank you to the Mahara team for providing a powerful tool to the open source community and for all their continued support…

Thank you to everyone who contributes to Mahara.org

And, of course

The inspirational learners who motivate us to keep providing them with the best technologies to help them shine

Day 2Session Items• The Mahara Community – let’s become members

• Brainstorm – ideas for staff engagement and deployment

• Plans

• Templates

• User Administration• Uploading using .csv• Roles• Account options

Site Administration Mahara Mobile