01 September 2010, 4:30

Hi All,

I am an author recruiter at Packt Publishing (www.packtpub.com). We publish computer-related books on a wide variety of IT topics.

We are planning to publish a new book on Mahara. I am looking out for potential authors to write this book, who are experts and passionate about Mahara and would like to share their knowledge with everyone.

Title: Mahara Cookbook
Planned to be a 300 pages book, targeted at people who have been using Mahara for a while but want to learn how to do more advanced things with it.

To give you an idea about the way things work at Packt:

• * The editorial team at Packt works with the author through the project.

• * We pay a royalty of 16% and an advance against it.

• * The marketing team at Packt ensures that the book is well promoted.

*In its ongoing commitment to OpenSource, Packt donates a percentage of revenue generated by the book to the OpenSource project on which it is based. We have donated more than 150 000 dollars since inception in 2004.

Could you please let me know if you find it interesting to author this book?

Thanks,

Snehman.

01 September 2010, 18:28

Hello Snehman,

Thanks for your post and the great news that you are thinking about another Mahara book. We just made the release candidate for version 1.3 public and will have a stable release some time soon. As you can see from the release notes at http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=2207 there are many enhancements to 1.2 and also features that are good for extensive portfolio use.

Thus, a Mahara Cookbook is a great idea.

I'd like to be involved in this project as part of an authoring team. Anybody else who wants to collaborate?

Or rather have a large team of cooks (aka authors) who contribute the individual recipes and a team of editors who bring everybody together and do the editing stuff. But the book being essentially community authored.

Cheers

Kristina

02 September 2010, 4:52

I would also be very keen to be involved to write a chapter or contribute in any way possible. Having provided a free Mahara hosting service for nearly two years now, we have learnt a lot. That said my academic interest is in the role of digital literacy and community in ePortfolio adoption. Perhaps the book could include Mahara 'how' as well as pedagogical drivers for adoption.

I think there are really two levels of  information needed. One is technical Mahara software issues, and the other is administration/user/pedagogical issues. Would a combination of both be possible? There are many tricks to share to help users start to push Mahara to its creative potential.

Regards, Ian Knox

02 September 2010, 2:59

Kia ora,

I'm keen to be involved. We make extensive use of Mahara at Albany Senior High School: http://wikieducator.org/Albany_Senior_High_School/e-learning#e-portfolio_system

I agree with Kristina that the features in 1.3 would make good reading for people.

Mark

02 September 2010, 14:55

Mar, I wonder how a book on a topic like this would look in WikiEducator, where individuals could download a pdf if they wanted or send to pediaprint if that suited? Maybe another project.

Paul.

02 September 2010, 3:21

Hi Snehman,

I'd too would love to get involved! I work at a University in England and have been involved with the roll-out of Mahara throughout the university,

Regards,

Sam :)

02 September 2010, 5:13

Hi All,

We would prefer this book to be single authored. But, we are open to proposals from co-authors also.

Please let me know if you find it intersting to write this book .

Regards,

Snehman

02 September 2010, 16:57

Hi Snehman,

We could have a single editor/author or point of contact for Packt but the idea of a 'cookbook' for Mahara is a good one - it would really benefit from the experiences and different approaches of multiple practitioners working in different contexts and in different countries. This would be a really good value-add for the Mahara community.

What do you think?

regards
Richard

02 September 2010, 17:35

Hi Snehman,

It would be great if those recipes could be shared under the same license as Wikieducator (CC Attribution-Share Alike). Is this something that Packt would be willing to do?

Cheers,

Francois