Mahara: Much more than a digital filling cabinet!

It is now time to elaborate on the most important ICT pedagogy that we will be engaging in as students....Mahara! Yes when I first heard about Mahara I thought that Scot was talking about architecture in India, I didn’t know anything about it. Since creating an account through CQ University Australia I have developed an appreciation for the Mahara program and can see it as a program I will utilise throughout my career. So what is Mahara? The below youtube clip gives you uses for the Mahara system.



They way that I would define Mahara is that it is an e.portfolio system that can be used for storing:

• Word Documents (Lesson Plans, Resume's, Research, Journal Articles etc.)
• Professional Blogs
• Personal Blogs
• Images
• Video
• Artwork

This is what I have picked up after I have only been engaging in the software for a couple of weeks. Mahara can also be defined as a professional social network. It can help you keep in contact with professionals in your career area and opens up the opportunities of further career development. One thing I have enjoyed is the personal focus of the program. It allows you to record goals in both personal and professional life, having these visible obviously helps you to become goal orientated and focuses you to achieve these goals. So having explained and defined Mahara from my point of view how would I use it in the classroom?

Mahara has many uses for myself embarking on professional teaching career so how would I apply it as a digital pedagogy? It could be said that Mahara could greatly benefit students that are moving from school to school. It can help store all work done and can be used to demonstrate the student’s knowledge to potential new schools. Mahara can also be used to help your students to become more goal orientated. Being able list your goals in a number of different area’s helps your students focus on what they want to achieve academically. Mahara can also be used by teachers as a form of assessment. Using Mahara as a medium for students choosing work that they want assessed can be effective. This is very student-centred and puts students in control of what they want assessed. Penny Leach had some interesting things to say about Mahara that can be seen in the youtube video below. One thing that i got from her speech was that Mahara can be used as a forum for a classroom, it can be used to create, discuss and evaluate ideas. Most of Penny’s talk focuses on the history of Mahara.



I hope you find my views on Mahara interesting and useful. A few questions that I would like to pose to you:

1. How would you use Mahara in the classroom?
2. How would you use Mahara at a Primary school level?
Regards

Lachlan