OK, the story keeps getting better. In my previous post I mentioned what we've been learning lately about the integration between moodle 2.0 and the open source ePortfolio platform, Mahara. I was just reading Miguel Guhlin's blog post on Google Apps integration with Moodle. These are incredible developments...5 years ago if you told me that there would be a full virtual learning network that both students and teachers could contribute to AND integration with a email/collaboration suite that was accessible across multiple platforms/devices, I would've called you a liar. I would've called you an even greater liar if you then told me that this would all come at a price tag of ZERO dollars.
Well, that is exactly what exists now with the integration between Moodle, Mahara, and Google Apps. Incredible stuff. Check out the post over at Miguel's blog for the complete 411 on this process.
Showing posts sorted by date for query mahara. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query mahara. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Moodle 2.0 Alpha and Mahara ePortfolio Integration
Adam Contois and I are really, really excited about the possibilities associated with Moodle 2.0 and its new integration with the fantastic ePortfolio solution, Mahara. Moodle 2 is still in alpha, but Adam recently set this up here on our LAN so we could demo its integration with Mahara and Google Docs. Right now we only have it setup with the capability for students to copy and push files from the Moodle virtual learning space over to their ePortfolio in Mahara and their Google Docs. We're scratching the surface of single sign on integration between Moodle 2 and google apps for education network and we're also looking at some of the other 3rd party integration features (flickr, Amazon S3, box.net, etc).
I've said it before at this blog, but I think we to think differently about assessment (even beyond rubrics) as school 2.0 continues to emerge and develop. Authentic student ePortfolio spaces should be a major component of this paradigm shift.
Major, major props to both the Mahara and Moodle open source communities for their outstanding work on this project.
The screencast below is pretty low budget, but hopefully it gives you a better idea of what this integration looks like.
I've said it before at this blog, but I think we to think differently about assessment (even beyond rubrics) as school 2.0 continues to emerge and develop. Authentic student ePortfolio spaces should be a major component of this paradigm shift.
Major, major props to both the Mahara and Moodle open source communities for their outstanding work on this project.
The screencast below is pretty low budget, but hopefully it gives you a better idea of what this integration looks like.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Keeping it Digital-Publishing Options for Students and Teachers
Instead of printing assignments out and turing them in, what about considering some of the following online publishing options? In addition to saving paper, digital publishing allows students the opportunity to share their work with a broader community for review and feedback. We know that authentic audience is an extremely motivating factor for students when creating and sharing work. Spaces like the ones below can provide students with these authentic audiences.
Moodle Forum Posts - This is a great way to share/publish writing, photos, audio clips, and even videos that are posted at YouTube. By giving students the Moodle Forum as a publishing option, their work is further opened up to the learning community for review and feedback. Moodle forums are not accessible to the outside world, so they're a great space to publish work that might involve privacy issues.
YouTube, Blip.TV and other video hosting services - these are great spaces to post student created videos. Privacy and copyright both need to be considered prior to making a decision to post to these sites, but they are wonderful options for many student projects such as this Civil Rights video created by students that I worked with two years ago (the video has over 10,000 views!)
Blog posts for writing samples - Using moodle blogs, students may publish their writing so that it is visible only to others who have Castilleja moodle accounts, or they may make their work visible on the open web. The downside of the standard moodle blogging tool is that it does not allow commenting (the next major moodle revision will include commenting--hooray!) We actually have a second blogging option in our moodle network called, "OU Blogs," and this does allow others within the network to leave comments. OU Blogs also allows "Class Blogs," which is a single blog for a class that all members may post to and comment on. Depending on the age of the students, they could create blogs at sites like edublogs.org or blogger.com as well.
Google Sites within Castilleja's Google Apps network - Google Sites are essentially wikis, and all students and faculty who have a Casti Google apps network account have access to easily creating Google Sites. Just like with a wiki, you can give others access to your wiki so they can edit the pages and contribute content to the site. Here is a google site created by our 8th grade science teacher for the recent bridge project challenge that students were participating in.
Mahara ePortfolios - this is yet another publishing options for students. Imagine a space where students could showcase their work from across subject areas over the course of the entire year (or years). See my sample portfolio online here. Their work could then be reviewed by members of the learning community. Mahara allows the user full control over the visibility of the portfolio. Older students who are college bound may want to publish their portfolios on the open web, while younger students may elect to keep their portfolios only visible inside of the network. It is a very powerful and flexible open source social portfolio space and it also plays very well with Moodle (in moodle 2.0 it will have more full featured integration than it has now).
Moodle Forum Posts - This is a great way to share/publish writing, photos, audio clips, and even videos that are posted at YouTube. By giving students the Moodle Forum as a publishing option, their work is further opened up to the learning community for review and feedback. Moodle forums are not accessible to the outside world, so they're a great space to publish work that might involve privacy issues.
YouTube, Blip.TV and other video hosting services - these are great spaces to post student created videos. Privacy and copyright both need to be considered prior to making a decision to post to these sites, but they are wonderful options for many student projects such as this Civil Rights video created by students that I worked with two years ago (the video has over 10,000 views!)
Blog posts for writing samples - Using moodle blogs, students may publish their writing so that it is visible only to others who have Castilleja moodle accounts, or they may make their work visible on the open web. The downside of the standard moodle blogging tool is that it does not allow commenting (the next major moodle revision will include commenting--hooray!) We actually have a second blogging option in our moodle network called, "OU Blogs," and this does allow others within the network to leave comments. OU Blogs also allows "Class Blogs," which is a single blog for a class that all members may post to and comment on. Depending on the age of the students, they could create blogs at sites like edublogs.org or blogger.com as well.
Google Sites within Castilleja's Google Apps network - Google Sites are essentially wikis, and all students and faculty who have a Casti Google apps network account have access to easily creating Google Sites. Just like with a wiki, you can give others access to your wiki so they can edit the pages and contribute content to the site. Here is a google site created by our 8th grade science teacher for the recent bridge project challenge that students were participating in.
Mahara ePortfolios - this is yet another publishing options for students. Imagine a space where students could showcase their work from across subject areas over the course of the entire year (or years). See my sample portfolio online here. Their work could then be reviewed by members of the learning community. Mahara allows the user full control over the visibility of the portfolio. Older students who are college bound may want to publish their portfolios on the open web, while younger students may elect to keep their portfolios only visible inside of the network. It is a very powerful and flexible open source social portfolio space and it also plays very well with Moodle (in moodle 2.0 it will have more full featured integration than it has now).
Thursday, January 29, 2009
ePortofolios for a Web2.0 World
Below is a short presentation that I have yesterday at our first Bay Area Independent School Tech Coordinators meeting up at Lick Wilmerding School in San Francisco. It is on the topic of Mahara as an open source software solution for ePortfolios. I thing the presentation isn't really about Mahara as much as it is about the importance of creating ePortfolio platforms for students to share the wonderful work that they're doing in school...my portable audio recorder died yesterday prior to my talk, so I re-recorded this at the end of the day today.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Moodle + Mahara ePortolio = Mahoodle...a few thoughts
Early in the school year we were tasked with finding an ePortfolio environment that we could use for a pilot group of teachers who wanted to create an electronic version of their paper/printed portfolio/assessment document that they've typically completed each year. The goal was to create a space where faculty could contribute their portfolio and interact with peer portfolios with the goal of creating some additional interdisciplinary/inter-grade level interaction.
Our goal was to leverage our new Moodle virtual learning network in some capacity, as this was a space some of our early adopter faculty members were already working in. So we evaluated Exabis and Moofolio, which are both third party portfolio modules that appear in Moodle as blocks. We had a sandbox/test moodle network that we experimented with these modules on (I strongly recommend that you have a sandbox moodle network that is used to test out these 3rd party modules prior to bringing them into your live environment).
While we liked both Exabis and Moofolio, we received a little resistance from some faculty in terms of the look and feel of the tools. Both are effective tools, but neither will win any awards for cosmetics.
We eventually stumbled on Mahara and like the notion of integretion with Moodle. At this point "integration" with moodle only refers to single sign on. Once a user authenticates to Moodle, she can click a link to the ePortfolio system and not have to worry about signing in again. Moodle 2.0, due out this summer, offers some promising next steps as far as integration with moodle goes. It was selected by the Moodle community as the standard ePortfolio module for Moodle 2.0. From what I gather, this will allow users to very easily push some of the artifacts that they've posted in Moodle classes over to their Mahara ePortfolio space.
We have about 10-12 facutly authoring their portfolios in Mahara right now (my portfolio sample is visible online here). We created a group in which these early adopters may contribute their portfolios for comment and review by other members of the ePortfolio pilot community. Most faculty are still in the process of assembling their portfolios, but the real value will be the commenting and feedback that each of us can provide to members of the community. In addition to commenting on the entire single page view of a faculty member of the community, the system allows individual artificat commenting as well. If a teacher shares a photo of her student's artwork, members of the community can drill into that photo artifact and leave a comment.
I should also say that Mahara serves as a digital repository for portfolio samples. Media files and static files may be added to personal workspaces, tagged, organized and eventually shared in a portfolio view. RSS feeds from external sources are also supported, so if users already have a workspace that generates RSS feeds (blogs, photo streams, social bookmarks, wiks, video/podcasts, etc) these can be displayed in a portfolio as well.
It is important to note that the software and hardware cost of our Moodle learning network and the Mahara ePortfolio is a whopping $0. Both software packages are free and we're using free server software as well (Cent OS, PHP, Apache on a 5 year old Dell server). We have a sharp software engineer on staff who built and configured our Moodle/Mahara network (props to Adam Contois!)
Now that we have cut our teeth with this platform and with the concept of faculty ePortfolios in a social environment, we're getting ready to explore the following questions:
1. Are we ready to do this with students?? It is becoming clear that as students create more creative and collaborative work that we will need new assessment methods and platforms. Fine arts teachers have always struggled with applying traditional grading metrics to the assessment of creative works...many of our content area teachers are are now experiencing this same challenge. Fine arts teachers have used portfolios to have students showcase and evaluate their work...some of our content are teachers may begin looking at ePortoflios as an authentic assessment tool for the same reasons that fine arts teachers have been using portfolios for years.
2. Are we ready to expand this with teachers?? I don't know the answer to this question. I do know that everyone likes choices and options. The fact that participation is voluntary means that we have community members who are motivated to engage in this method of reflection and review. My hunch is that this will grow organically over time due to the social nature of the platform.
3. What are our next steps?? Well, we'll continue to see how this grows and develops over time through organic approaches. People telling their stories via informal hallway conversations usually leads to new folks who want to participate in the community. We're also seriously considering bumping up to Moodle 2.0 this summer which will offer more robust connections with Mahara. Down the road we'd like to offer different themes in the network for users to choose from. Not a big deal here, but we do know that individuals like to personalize the look and feel of their learning spaces.
Computer/Server Setup:
CentOS (open source Redhat), Apache, PHP, Moodle, and Mahara
5 year old Dell Power Edge 2650 Server (click here and here to see a photo of our moodle server)
Note: I gave a presentation to the Bay Area Independent School Tech Coordinators gathering yesterday at Lick Wilmerding up in San Francisco. I will update this plot post with a link to the video from my presentation just as soon as I have a moment.
Our goal was to leverage our new Moodle virtual learning network in some capacity, as this was a space some of our early adopter faculty members were already working in. So we evaluated Exabis and Moofolio, which are both third party portfolio modules that appear in Moodle as blocks. We had a sandbox/test moodle network that we experimented with these modules on (I strongly recommend that you have a sandbox moodle network that is used to test out these 3rd party modules prior to bringing them into your live environment).
While we liked both Exabis and Moofolio, we received a little resistance from some faculty in terms of the look and feel of the tools. Both are effective tools, but neither will win any awards for cosmetics.
We eventually stumbled on Mahara and like the notion of integretion with Moodle. At this point "integration" with moodle only refers to single sign on. Once a user authenticates to Moodle, she can click a link to the ePortfolio system and not have to worry about signing in again. Moodle 2.0, due out this summer, offers some promising next steps as far as integration with moodle goes. It was selected by the Moodle community as the standard ePortfolio module for Moodle 2.0. From what I gather, this will allow users to very easily push some of the artifacts that they've posted in Moodle classes over to their Mahara ePortfolio space.
We have about 10-12 facutly authoring their portfolios in Mahara right now (my portfolio sample is visible online here). We created a group in which these early adopters may contribute their portfolios for comment and review by other members of the ePortfolio pilot community. Most faculty are still in the process of assembling their portfolios, but the real value will be the commenting and feedback that each of us can provide to members of the community. In addition to commenting on the entire single page view of a faculty member of the community, the system allows individual artificat commenting as well. If a teacher shares a photo of her student's artwork, members of the community can drill into that photo artifact and leave a comment.
I should also say that Mahara serves as a digital repository for portfolio samples. Media files and static files may be added to personal workspaces, tagged, organized and eventually shared in a portfolio view. RSS feeds from external sources are also supported, so if users already have a workspace that generates RSS feeds (blogs, photo streams, social bookmarks, wiks, video/podcasts, etc) these can be displayed in a portfolio as well.
It is important to note that the software and hardware cost of our Moodle learning network and the Mahara ePortfolio is a whopping $0. Both software packages are free and we're using free server software as well (Cent OS, PHP, Apache on a 5 year old Dell server). We have a sharp software engineer on staff who built and configured our Moodle/Mahara network (props to Adam Contois!)
Now that we have cut our teeth with this platform and with the concept of faculty ePortfolios in a social environment, we're getting ready to explore the following questions:
1. Are we ready to do this with students?? It is becoming clear that as students create more creative and collaborative work that we will need new assessment methods and platforms. Fine arts teachers have always struggled with applying traditional grading metrics to the assessment of creative works...many of our content area teachers are are now experiencing this same challenge. Fine arts teachers have used portfolios to have students showcase and evaluate their work...some of our content are teachers may begin looking at ePortoflios as an authentic assessment tool for the same reasons that fine arts teachers have been using portfolios for years.
2. Are we ready to expand this with teachers?? I don't know the answer to this question. I do know that everyone likes choices and options. The fact that participation is voluntary means that we have community members who are motivated to engage in this method of reflection and review. My hunch is that this will grow organically over time due to the social nature of the platform.
3. What are our next steps?? Well, we'll continue to see how this grows and develops over time through organic approaches. People telling their stories via informal hallway conversations usually leads to new folks who want to participate in the community. We're also seriously considering bumping up to Moodle 2.0 this summer which will offer more robust connections with Mahara. Down the road we'd like to offer different themes in the network for users to choose from. Not a big deal here, but we do know that individuals like to personalize the look and feel of their learning spaces.
Computer/Server Setup:
CentOS (open source Redhat), Apache, PHP, Moodle, and Mahara
5 year old Dell Power Edge 2650 Server (click here and here to see a photo of our moodle server)
Note: I gave a presentation to the Bay Area Independent School Tech Coordinators gathering yesterday at Lick Wilmerding up in San Francisco. I will update this plot post with a link to the video from my presentation just as soon as I have a moment.
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