Mahara Portfolio

Wow what a site...... Another one to add to my growing list. Well I found this site a little confusing at first, trying to navigatge my way around, first I had trouble logging in, as I couldn't remember what usename I had used (I have so many) I finally got through and managed to enter data into my profile. My next step was to enter a view. Well this was the most frustrating part, it took me about 20 mins to finally get one up and running after realising I had to actually write one not upload one. I also managed to upload a photo from my computer with ease I must say, Whew, glad for that. Putting my views up for public view was reasonably easy, having to trawl through all the names was a little tedious though. After entering 2 views I then returned to moodle and followed the instructions to head to the website to view more about the Mahara site and how to use it effectively. Boy, if only I had seen this first it would've made things so much easier and faster and less stressful, and believe me I don't need anymore of that.

Anyway after going through these tutorials, I was able to go back and fix a few things up and look for friends and mangaged to join a group as well. I'm pretty proud of myself to be able to have completed that.

In the classroom I could see a great way to have students and Teachers introducing themselves to each other before the year starts and also enabling a Teacher to advise all students what is upcoming on the calender for the term and setting out authentics tasks that are to be completed during the term on their unit of work. These could be used for collaborative tasks or reflections between students whilst working on them. A great place to store all students work that has been completed also and have them ready for jobs by using the resume section.
Being able to keep the portfolio within a group and not for public sharing is a great way to keep track of students work and progress. I am curious at what others have thought about this site.
Wendy.