Kia mahara ki a Mahara

Looking for the right e-portfolio tool *for your students?

You have come to the point in your practice where e-portfolios, by providing a Personalised Learning Environment, have become an essential part of teaching and learning.

Maybe you are spurred on by the fact that as of 2011, NCEA internal assessments for languages require that “a selection of evidence that best shows accomplishments across a range of situations is made after negotiation with the teacher from a collection of interactions/ written texts gathered over time”. (Conditions of Assessment L1 Sept 09)

And you are seriously thinking your students should be given the opportunity to “demonstrate the extent to which they can use ICT to communicate effectively by integrating ICT naturally into regular classroom learning activities” (ICT Transforming Education: a regional guide, J. Anderson Unesco 2010 p. 50)

Among the changes and decisions you have to make to accommodate the evolution of the NZC and the assessment system, one is to choose a tool/system which will essentially allow your students to store digitalised data, and to showcase their abilities and successes in your subject. A system which also:

- records the students’ learning journey
- enables you as a teacher to feedback and feed forward
- allows for communication with parents

And in building their e-portfolio students take responsibility for managing their work, get multiple opportunities to evaluate their learning and seek feedback from you while keeping a record of it: students take ownership of their learning

There are plenty of choices when it comes to choosing an e-portfolio system. Only you in discussion with your colleagues within your school will make the decision. Whichever you set your eyes on, you may face initial difficulties: issues of access to computers and/or network, the IT system and infrastructure in your school, communication with other teachers/management/specialists, and the initial upskilling you and your students will undertake to go on to using an e-portfolio system. The implementation of e-portfolios may require an upgrade of the school cybersafety policy and conditions of online usage.

                    Kia Maharatia 
 

Here is a short non-techie French teacher presentation of one of these e-portfolio tools, the school version of Mahara: myportfolio

Meaning 'think' or 'thought' in Te Reo Māori, the name Mahara reflects the project's dedication to creating a user-centred life-long learning and development application underpinned by considerations of pedagogy and policy.

- Mahara is a comprehensive open source software eportfolio system that has been designed with educational institutions in mind. Several versions of Mahara exist.
- myportfolio is the version of Mahara schools can currently use for free. myportfolio is a hosted service, on the cloud, it is not owned by your school. The Ministry of Education pays open source software specialists to develop functionalities so that myportfolio meets the needs of the school users. In particular there is a lot of work going towards easier/better integration with web 2 tools, especially those that enable digital and rich media (that we do use in Languages: podcasts, videos, embedding web 2 products...)
- There is potential for my myportfolio to tie in with the three main/supported LMS (Moodle, UltraNet and KnowledgeNet)
- myportfolio has both an e-portfolio and a social network capability. The administrator has control of what information users can access (eg: some functionalities can be disabled easily if not deemed desirable)
- All users (teachers and students) need a username and a password.
- Once the name of the students are uploaded, each can get into myportfolio, enter basic profile information (administrators can choose to disable this function) and start creating a View (that is a webpage). A View is best thought of as a page or a section in a paper portfolio.
- A student View can be customized (format the page in one or several columms). Text, image and media (which make the artefacts of the eportfolio) can be rearranged easily thanks to the drag and drop interface
e.g: if you want to add an image to your View, drag and drop the image module to the body of the View, then a text box will appear that will allow you to insert an image from your computer in the same way that you would attach a file to an email - by browsing your computer, selecting and inserting a file.
- All the files added to one View can be reused in another. (Users can create as many Views as they wish for their purpose: eg: a view for Interaction work, a view for Written Texts work etc)
- Students give their teacher access to their View(s), using the edit View access function. They can choose to also give parents access also and/or peers (for pair or group work for instance).
- The teacher arranges access to the various students’ Views in Groups (e.g: 11French), and invites the students to the group. The student then grants access to his/her View by entering the teacher’s name in the Edit Access box. The teacher then accesses individual student’s Views within this group.
- The teacher gets a message every time a student has made a change to their View. The teacher can then visit the View, and, for instance, add a comment to the artefact that has been uploaded, or an answer to a question that has been asked. This is part of the formative assessment process. The student will then get a message telling them their View has evolved.
- The teacher can create Templates (eg: for assessment purpose). Students can then create a View for Assessment Purpose (eg: for .5 three good copies will be chosen from within the collection of artefacts) using this template which may have NZQA related information (succes criteria, conditions of assessment, task etc). How to create a Template (Thank you Pete Potter, Timaru ICTPD cluster)
- A view can be shared with someone who is not a member of the group (eg: a check marker outside your school) by easily generating a “secret URL” (that is a link to the page that you can, for instance, email on)
- For summative assessment purposes, the teacher can create a Controlled Group. Students can submit their work to the controlled group by one mouse-click, and their work is ‘locked’ while you mark it – meaning they can’t edit once it has been submitted. I wouldn’t bother with this for formative assessment – just mark their work in their “View” which they will need to have made accessible to you under the ‘edit View access’ page. This is a main point of difference for myportfolio as other systems do not have this “locked” view feature.
- Another point of difference between myportfolio and other e-portfolio tools is that Senior secondary students can export their myportfolio when they go onto tertiary education as many use Mahara powered eportfolio tools.

Suggested steps:

• Jump in and have a go at the basic features: try it for yourself or with close colleagues, by visiting http://demo.mahara.org/
  
• Request a taster session (see below for details)
  
• Make a small sample group, with a few students, and try to find a block of time to learn together.
  
• Ensure you have a few artefacts (images, word processed documents, videos) at the ready to upload in your view
  
• Navigate across the functions, make notes, think of potential questions, and see online for answers
  
• Be prepared to work for it: like any new skill, you will need to apply yourself to acquire it. But be reassured that some features will look familiar and that the new one will become familiar with use. The learning curve is steep, just the same as with any new tool,  but the benefits will speak for themselves: just picture being able to cut and paste a simple URL (link) in an email to the moderator! Your work on getting e-portfolios up and running for your students will go hand in hand with your Programme of Work planning.
  

There is a vast array of information available to get you and your students started, to support your work and the overall system administrator’s work.

What is myportfolio?

myportfolio video tutorials

Mahara Wiki  with a step by step User Guide

Mahara Training Workshop on WikiEducator

Mahara Resource Page

Managing Groups

Mahara Forum

Mahara Free Taster Sessions "A Mahara taster is a short (90 to 120 minutes) introduction to Mahara and the hosted service www.myportfolio.school.nz. This a free professional development workshop designed to help teachers and (if you want) students get started with eportfolios using Mahara. An experienced Mahara user will visit your school/cluster and facilitate this face-to-face session. By the end of the session each attendee will have started their own e-portfolio in www.myportfolio.school.nz, created at least one view and joined at least one group".

You can request an Mahara taster session for you and your colleagues by visiting the MLE reference group at this link http://bit.ly/9aJHIg (copy & paste in your web browser if not redirected), find out who can help in your area, suggest a venue and a time (hit the Edit this Page button at the bottom of the page)

To:

*Jamin Lietze, for his presentation "Introducing the e-portfolio" in a NZC context, Kristina Hoeppner (Catalyst IT) who ran the Mahara Introduction Breakout at ULearn10, Carolyn Stuart (Principal Tawa Intermediate), myportfolio experienced user, and Paul Seiler (Managed Learning Environment manager, MoE) who both clarified many points for me, and Ronja Skandera (Hamilton High School for Girls) who has shared selflessly her research and her current understanding and working practice of myportfolio,

Thank you.