SWOT and E-Portfolios
E-Portfolios
Wow, I would like to congratulate the group for your excellent project. Very well done and packed with a ton of information.
I’ve used project based assessment many time in my teaching career with ultimately good results. I worked at an alternative school and we charted student analysis through e-portfolios. Now, these were informal, for the most part we took a collection of student work and either made a PowerPoint out of it, or simply placed it in an appropriate container. The students enjoyed creating the portfolio and it was very informative to see how they progressed throughout the year.
After going through this week’s presentation I am very curious to try out Mahara the next time I need to make an e-portfolio, although I do have some trepidation. I believe that it is important for students to express themselves creatively and if they are all using a set template it becomes more difficult. However, as an educator, this is far easier to facilitate and implement, and may ultimately be worth it thus giving it a high SWOT analysis. By using a set template it is easier for the teacher to provide a set goal for the students and to assist with trouble shooting, thus making it a good investment, especially for large groups.
My 2 cents,
David.
verenanz 7:43 am on November 12, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi David. You make a very good point about templates. Mahara does offer a great template, but it is restrictive…..however, I imagine that you could always link or connect other artifacts to Mahara to offer a larger perspective? I need to play with Mahara more to fully undertsand its capabilities….
Thanks for your post,
Verena:)
Doug Smith 9:05 am on November 12, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi David,
Mahara is a nice (free) product, and you are welcome to test it out on my server at your leisure. Please contact me privately if you would like to keep using it for an extended period of time for experimentation.
Mahara is very much for institutional e-portfolio use, and it ties in pretty well with Moodle installations. You can set it up to use a single sign-on for both products. If a person has time and a web server, individuals can install their own Mahara and create their own e-portfolio. Or they can take it a step further and use Mahara for their own teaching. And it extends onwards from there…
khenry 8:32 pm on November 12, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi David,
I like the idea of using a SWOT analysis in evaluating tools. It is so often used in corporate settings but here it proves to be a very effective method of analysis across sectors and instruments.
Kerry-Ann