28 February 2011, 19:25

Hi all,

I wrote a blog post about a method I tried recently in a Mahara training session which worked well, so I thought I'd share it here after a comment from Richard W.

Thanks to those who have already commented :)

Mark.

02 March 2011, 5:44

02 June 2011, 5:46

Just found this post - very good indeed and a perfect expression of the responses from staff when faced with Mahara alongside Moodle.  The answer to all issues of this kind, I suppose, is to model effective use of the resource - so I'd completely agree with the training ideas here.

09 September 2011, 11:50

I have been away a while from all things Mahara but here is an article that I found somewhat informative.

"Rethinking Electronic Portfolios to Promote Sustainability among Teachers

Craig E. Shepard and Stan Skrabut ( U of Wyoming)

Techtrends Vol. 55. #5 p. 31-38 (September/October 2011)

best

tm

09 September 2011, 12:31

Mark,

Thanks for the blog post. I implemented a moodle-mahara set up 3 years ago but have not been that involved of late.

And also to Sigi for her very helpful presentation materials.

Our Teacher College is embarking on a new program that is much looser and less structured than our old "stand and deliver" model (well that's a bit harsh but...).

I have been playing around with the Moodle/Mahara integration set up, but would like to get a really solid handle on it if I am going to propose this becomes a key "cohering" expereince for all our teacher candidates during their 2 year experience. TC's still have classes but are in schools a lot more and it is this linkage between practical/experiential and the theoretica/pedagogical that I think the M-M combination would be especially helpful in keeping together in their development as "scholarly professionals." 

We have something called our professional growth guide that is the core of their internship experience, that is the key set of measures/experiences/factors that each teacher candidate (and cooperating teachers) must work with during their internship.

There is both the "learning/assessment" aspect of the M-M use and the "evaluation" of TC work through the use of the M-M experiences

I guess my questions for you and others...around such an endeavor are:

1. What informative literature do you know of that can help in substantiating undertaking this kind of implementation in a college wide situation of 400 teacher candidates there for 2 years.

2. I am using earlier versions of Mahara and Moodle. What are perhaps the most cogent aspects of newer versions, that might aid people in the use of the M-M experience?

I am writing this in part to clarify for myself the intent/format of what I am considering.

Any comments by you or others is very welcome.

best

10 September 2011, 20:49

Hello Tim,

Which version of Mahara are you using? If you are still on Mahara 1.2, we highly recommend that you upgrade to the latest stable version (1.4) as 1.2 is not supported anymore, i.e. there are no security updates made anymore.

Since the advent of Moodle 2, it is now possible to transfer certain content from Moodle to Mahara via the Portfolio API. Thus, a student can move, for example, his blog posts and forum messages to his Mahara portfolio and use them there.

The Repository API for Mahara has not yet been implemented, but will allow to use Mahara as file repository in the future. Thus, the connection within Mahoodle is being extended and goes beyond mere sharing of account information.

Cheers

Kristina