E-Portfolios: Playing with Mahara

I have been attending some training programs over the last few months on developing a teaching portfolio. While the I found the ideas covered in the programs to be of great value, the technology which was being used to manage them was archaic - Noah would have rejected it. Some were keeping their portfolios on paper and storing them in lever-arch folders - ugh! The most up-to-date technology I saw was putting it all in an MS Word file - at least this was electronic and searchable but it is like putting a square peg in a round hole. It was not going to fit no matter how big a hammer you used.

To digress a little, for those not familiar with portfolios in general and teaching portfolios in particular, they are collections of documents, photos, certificates, letters and other artefacts which serve as evidence for any claims you may make. The reason I started looking at them was that they are becoming necessary when applying for jobs and grants and I had seen a couple of colleagues use them.

Back to my problem - I was convinced I needed a teaching portfolio but I was not satisfied with the methods used to manage them. I was convinced that paper was not the method I was going to use. I could shove everything into a folder on my hard disk but that would not help with managing the information. I needed a tool that would help me manage the information. I started thinking about the management functions I would need. These were:

1. Store multiple file types - doc, pdf, jpg, mp3, and others
2. Multiple and flexible retrieval mechanisms
3. Shareable
4. Web accessible
   
5. Secure storage
6. Minimal cost

Given my biases, Web 2.0 philosophy and FOSS were also desirable characteristics. I have not done a detailed search for all the options but I think I have found a winner anyway. It is called Mahara. It is from New Zealand which just shows they can do more than play rugby.

Mahara is FOSS and Web 2.0. You can get a trial account from http://mahara.org/ which gives you 50Mb of storage - way too little for a permanent solution but enough for a trial. If you go to Mahara, do not click on the "download" or "demo" links - click on the "Register" link to create a trial account - the "Register" link is extremely small and well camouflaged but you can find it with a bit of perseverence. Once you have your account you can start uploading and playing.

The only problem I have with Mahara from my brief experimentation is the teeny-weeny 50Mb storage. All I need to do now is to find a hosting service which will give me multi Gb of storage for a handful of shiny beads.