Engaging with Mahara e.Portfolios

I had a pretty rough idea of what an e.Portfolio in Mahara would be like but after starting work on my own and watching Scot's YouTube tutorial videos I can see how useful and powerful Mahara can be for both teachers and students.

Firstly on an individual level it's a great location for storing all of your teaching resources - lesson plans, videos, images, etc that you can then access from anywhere by simply logging onto the Internet.

Secondly, it's a great way to collaborate with other teachers to share good ideas, advice, lesson plans and units of work.  Mahara provides a Groups facility, Views, a Friends facility and discussion forums - all which can be included in your e.Portfolio.

And finally, what a great way to engage students! Mahara could provide the framework for a unit of work for the students. Using views you could create a series of lessons, on any subject, to comprise a unit of work. Students could be given a secret URL, for example, for each lesson. This could then help free the teacher up to spend time with individual students. In addition the students could create their own e.Portfolio to respond to their tasks that make up the unit of work. Each lesson students could gradually contribute more and more to their e.Portfolio and by the end of the unit of work, create a view in their e.Portfolio to submit an assignment or assessment task. They could also be used to encourage or facilitate group work.

Again, another great tool for engaging students.