Reflecting on setting up an e.Portfolio in Mahara

This is all very new to me! It has been over a week now since I have worked through the course material relating to Mahara, so I am going to revisit the package this weekend and continue to build on my e.Porfolio - I have really only touched the surface and am still very much in the exploration stages. Already, I am amazed at what Mahara allows you to do - a fully featured electronic portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking system that connects users and creates online communities. Imagine the possibilities for us as future learning managers to be able to watch our students use this tool to set up their personal learning and development environments, and what a great example of student-centred learning!

I think Mahara is a fantastic way to build presentations for a specific purpose, and we have the ability to include evidence of what we have designed, developed and implemented. We will get to experience this first hand when we put together Assessment item 3 – our Teaching e.Portfolio. I found Mahara allows me to save a wide range of file types within my account and to produce ‘views’ that can be developed for a specific purpose and made available to whoever I choose. The fact that you can have several views to cater for different audiences is very beneficial. For example, I may have a personal business that I want to create a view for, which would have a different audience to my student-learning teacher view.

I can see how an e.Porfolio would be very useful for school students as it would allow them to keep all of their learning experiences, grades, results and certificates etc., in one organised place. Also, because they are in control of what they share and how they share this information and with whom (collaborative engaged learning), students are intrinsically motivated to learn due to the meaningful nature of the learning environment and activities (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1999, Pg. 1). Although, I do see Mahara as being of more benefit to high school and university students, than primary school students. Perhaps I am wrong to make this assumption?

It is exciting to think that by the end of this course I will have developed the beginnings of a student teaching e.Portolio that I can use for interviews and job applications. This will hopefully assist me with gaining a relief teaching position, by making examples of my work throughout the course, and background available to school principles. I think this is a good example of how Mode 2 knowledge is becoming more widely established in educational settings and fundamental to adapt to our ever-changing knowledge-rich environment, as reinforced by Heath in (Teacher Education and the New Knowledge Environment, 2001 "Schools" para. 5).


References:

Kearsley, G., & Shneiderman, B. Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning, sourced from: http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm

Heath, G. (2001) Teacher Education and the New Knowledge Environment, Fremantle.
sourced from: http://www.aare.edu.au/01pap/hea01582.htm, 10/02/2010