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Mahara
A personal learning environment
Mahara is the online and social networking counterpart to the learn.gold Virtual Learning Environment.We already have learn.gold - what does Mahara do?
- Whereas learn.gold is built around courses and programmes - i.e. is by default subject-centred and tutor-centred - Mahara places individuals at the centre. On Mahara, you can self-organise, connect, and show without waiting to be given space.
- Whereas learn.gold confers authority and permissions to people with a Tutor role, Mahara allows anybody to set up a Group, Forum, or Blog, upload Files, create web pages (called 'Views') and create links to other sites.
Sounds a bit like Facebook...
The difference is that:
- Goldsmiths, which hosts Mahara, is bound by UK data protection legislation.
- Mahara is a non-commercial environment intended to support your learning.
How should we use Mahara?
We look forward to seeing how you decide to use Mahara. Some possibilities:
- forming communities of interest and learning within or across courses, for sharing and discussion
- collecting a portfolio in different media; making bespoke presentations of different items from it
- as a presentation environment within Goldsmiths, or open to external viewers
- collaborative project work
- your curriculum vitae - you can easily create different multimedia CVs for different job applications, based on what you have created, linked to, or uploaded
- a personal learning environment - bring together different aspects of your online learning in one hub
- for a record of your learning, including blogging
What happens when I leave Goldsmiths?
- You can export your portfolio from your account
- Mahara is open to external users, so you can create a new account and import your portfolio
How can I access Mahara?
- With your Goldsmiths IT Services username and password (the one you use for Goldsmiths email) log into learn.gold (http://learn.gold.ac.uk) and click on the Mahara icon on learn.gold's front page.