Mahara

Mahara is a blogging platform that the college has already got installed and set up. The Mahara engine is already in place and there is function ability already in place. All that is needed is for portfolios to be uploaded and run it on the platform. Seen as it’s already there, it would cost less money to set up this function within the college.

Mahara is provided freely as Open Source software

In brief, open source means that you are allowed to copy, use and modify Mahara

provided you agree to:

1. Include the source code when distributing Mahara to others;

2. Not modify or remove the original license and copyrights

3. Apply this same license to any derivative work.

an ePortfolio has a much broader scope as an online collection of reflections and digital Artefacts (such as documents, images, blogs, resumés, multimedia, hyperlinks and contact information). Learners and staff can use an ePortfolio to demonstrate their learning, skills and development and record their achievements over time to a selected audience.

5 MB of disk space

Blogs


A comprehensive blogging tool is provided in Mahara, where blogs and blog postings are considered Artefacts and may be added to a View. 
 
The blogging tool allows users to: 


4. Create blog posts using a WYSIWYG editor

5. Attach files to posts

6. Embed images into postings

7. Configure whether or not Comments may be received on their blog

Create draft postings for later publishing

Social Networking


Mahara provides a social networking facility where users can create and maintain a list of Friends within the system. ePortfolio owners choose whether other users can add them to their Friends list automatically or by request and approval. 
An ePortfolio owner's Friends lists shows those Views to which they have been assigned access.

At present a social networking idea is in the pipeline being tested already.

Mahara shows Internal portfolios within the college but not outside the college.