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Submitted by sguilana on Thu, 10/16/2008 - 19:59.

Hi everyone!
I am amazed at the possibilities of mahara. We have just installed it in our highschool and I am experimenting with it before it takes off...
I have a question. When you edit the views of your portfolio, you can go public, can't you? I can only choose from logged users or friends and it is a real shame... The option of going public is absolutely essential in my view!
Can anyone help me? did we install anything wrong...?? thanx :-)

‹ If I have Site Administration access can I change the username of an account Contribution to Mahara ›

Hello Guilana, To allow

Submitted by Aaricia on Thu, 10/16/2008 - 23:01.

Hello Guilana,

To allow public views, the administrator of the site has to allow that option in the "Site Options", "Allow public views" to yes.

I imagine that there would be an option so that each user can choose which views he wants to make public, but I only work in the technical side of Mahara.

Yes, I fully agree about the right of users to show their work. There is an interesting debate about it in Britain, the country where I work.

Who owns the portfolio: the learner of the institution?...

As I fully support J. Krishamurti's vision of education, my conception of eportfolio is "as personal online learning space in which the learner reflects on their journey towards self-awareness, wisdom and knowledge. This reflection can be done as intellectual process (blog, essays,compositions, etc) or as an aesthetic process (video, audio, images, etc)". However, the reality is,in our reductionist mainstream education in the West, eportfolio is merely reduced to an "e-assessment platform", where learners simply have to show that they have passed the criteria of an awarding body. In this case, the control and property of the eportfolio belongs to the institution. This last one decides if it allows public views or not.

I chose Mahara because I liked his holistic approach to the concept of eportfolio. Perphaps in New Zealand, where Mahara was born, they have a broader vision of education that in the Old World.

Regards.

Aaricia Thorgalson (aka Mari Cruz García)

public eportfolios

Submitted by sguilana on Fri, 10/17/2008 - 00:23.

Dear Mari Cruz Garcia!

Thanks for the prompt reply. We'll work with the administrator and see if we can finally go public. :-)
Taking this holistic view of learning as a life experience, eportfolios definitely belong to the learner.
I have been working with eportfolios for two years now with blogs as a support:
http://blocs.xtec.cat/portfolioproject

The comment that often arises from my students is: "what will happen with all this material? ...what if this platform disappears? ...How can I save it in my computer?"

Which raises two questions:
- The stability of the platforms and the possibility of exporting all this data (a feature available in the future, perhaps?)
- The sense of ownership in some students, the awareness of a process, a journey experienced they don't want to lose..
Of course, other students are just too happy to leave school and can't be bothered about their material, that's also a reality...

Anyway, mahara opens a new door to learning with eportfolios. Who knows... new world ways may catch on!

You might be interested to

Submitted by nigel on Fri, 10/17/2008 - 07:43.

You might be interested to know that export of portfolio data, and import again, is high on our priority list and we're hoping to be part of a project to implement import/export using the LEAP standard. If we get all the green lights, then basic import/export will be implemented over the next five months, and hopefully it can debut in Mahara 1.2.

great news

Submitted by sguilana on Fri, 10/17/2008 - 08:02.

Nigel,
this is really great news! :-)
I am so excited about this! It's a like a wish granted by the lamp genie! I am convinced it is going to make our task us teachers easier! it is difficult enough to change our beliefs and the students' beliefs to grasp the vision of eportfolio as a tool for lifelong learning... The technical difficulties are often a drawback and adds on to teachers/students fears and resistance to change... Mahara draws on previous experiences to move ahead. Congratulations!

Once you enable the 'Allow

Submitted by nigel on Fri, 10/17/2008 - 07:39.

Once you enable the 'Allow public views' site option, then users get the choice on the View Access screen to choose whether to allow the view to be publicly accessed or not :)

going public

Submitted by sguilana on Fri, 10/17/2008 - 08:07.

Thank you all!
It's working eventually!! Apparently, our administrator entered through the moodle and could not choose this option of public viewing. By entering through the mahara he quickly solved it. This is my understanding in layman's terms of his technical explanation ;-)
Thanks again. Keep up the good work! :-)