05 February 2010, 19:29

Hello:

A collegue and myself will be presenting at our annual regional teacher convention on February 18th, 13:00 - 14:15 Mountain Standart Time. The title of our presentation is 'Mahara:  An Eportfolio with Bite!'

Lena and myself have been using Mahara for 5 month now and would like to inspire others to do so as well.

 We thought it would be nice to have an informal Skype call-in with Mahara users and developers from accross the globe. We are interested in how others use Mahara, what their experiences are, where they think future directions will lead to etc. 

This is meant to be a very informal chat. We would provide you with a set of questions well in advance. 

It would be great if a few people would respond. Between myself and Lena we can communicate in English, German and French but we could arrange for a number of other languages to have interpreters for.

Thanks so much,

 Dirk

05 February 2010, 20:58

Hi Dirk, we have been providing a free Mahara based hosting service for over a year now, and tend to push it to its limits. 

I am also a full time lecturer (Uni of Ballarat Australia) and I am currently working on a peer (student + retired mentors) to peer multi media literacy  project. It also includes student/teacher mentoring as we found that a lack of teacher media/multiliteracy skills really slows the potential use of ePortfolios.

We are also looking at ePortfolios for pre-schoolers which is pretty exciting.  Anyway would be happy to help if needed. Regards, Ian 

06 February 2010, 1:46

I would definitely be interested in being involved. It would be neat to see how Mahata  is used with other schools and educational networks as  a whole

Cheers Cyndy

06 February 2010, 4:30

Hi Dirk,

I still have saved your email about our first contact . Would be great to be part of this cool project.

Cheers Heinz

06 February 2010, 12:26

Ian, Cyndy, Heinz:

 This is great !! Looking forward to the discussion. It will be the highlight of our presentation I am sure.

Heinz, I was going to contact you and Nigel individually but you are ahead of me  

We have been confirmed broadband internet access by the convention people. Its a hotel connection so we will bring our 'backup Internet on a stick' with us because you never know. I am hoping I can set up a temporary WIFI so the audience can join but not sure.

Would it be useful to use this forum as the primary way of communication? 

 Again, thanks in advance.

07 February 2010, 17:45

Hi,

I think to communicate here is ok. Do you own an googlewave account? I can send you innvitations.

cheers Heinz  

 PS I didn´t check the time zones? plz "translate" them for me!!

07 February 2010, 19:30

Wave could be good for this Heinz. I have been on/off with it. We had a large group and it was getting messy but for a small group it could be good. It needs a notification mechanism with gmail.I also have invitations if anyone needs them.

Regards, Ian

08 February 2010, 0:07

Hi Ian,

 you're on the wave 'Mahara Eportfolio at 2010 Palliser Teacher Convention, Calgary, Alberta, Canada'

08 February 2010, 0:06

Hello Heinz,

I do have a wave account. I think I would need your gmail email address to invite you?

We are in the Standard Mountain Time which is GMT minus 7 hours. Is Germany GMT?

Wenn es bei euch 21:00 Uhr ist, dann ist es 13:00 bei uns, oder 14:00Uhr...Kommt drauf an ob Ihr Sommer oder Winterzeit habt..weiss ich nicht mehr

Looks like Ian is GMT +11 (Melbourne) which would be plus 18 hours from where I am (Calgary, Canada)

Cyndy appears to be GMT +13 (New Zealand) 

So, the talk is scheduled to be from 13:00-14:15 which would be 21:00 in Germany and 7:00 in Melbourne and 9:00 in New Zealand. ?? Just doing a quick guess.

I was thinking we could do the call at 13:30 our time? Is that reasonable? 

08 February 2010, 11:01

Hi,

Heinz,[email protected] looks for an invitation

I will check my timezone :-D

Heinz