Mahara UK 2012 - Southampton

Vanguard Visions - http://flic.kr/p/edthjg

I've slacked in the whole blog updating process, my bad.. Well after an incredibly early start and getting stuck on the M25 for hours I made it to the Mahara UK2011 conference hosted at Southampton Solent. I managed to get there for the start of Philip Butler's session "E-Portfolios: Expanding in a Shrinking Landscape", as a side note I'll mention that I was also having a bash at using the cross platform note taking app Evernote. My colleague Aaron Burrell (@iaaronburrell) had mentioned it before but I was in one of those "Ugh, not another thing to register for" moments. However, I have an iPad for a reason right?!

Philips session was a great insight into what ULCC had been up to and their input into Mahara being one of the first partners to get involved with the project. He demonstrated the transition of web technologies from past (Phil mentioned Web1) compared to latest Web2 (A term coined in 2004, well 1999.. describing a new trend of community and user-centred web services) and how Mahara fits into this. Claps for Philip Butler, was a well presented session.

I won't go into all of the sessions, however Don Presant's session on "Community-based learning based on Mahara" is worthy of some note taking! Don opened the eyes of many to the possibilities of Mahara outside of student, module focused e-portfolios. Employability.. a student could use Mahara to build up a huge list of skills based evidence which could be wrapped up and presented to careers advisors/potential employers, obvious caveats of how long does the student have access to such services post graduation and external views for employers, by the way, very impressed with Evernote at this point, able to sync with devices, one minute I was typing on my iPad, syncd - continued on my iPhone as battery was getting low on the other device - flawless. I think I've found my new note taking facility! 

Aaannnnyway Don went on to demonstrate how the Resume, evidence building portfolio would look like - http://careerportfolio.mb.ca It focuses on a Pilipino immigrant who has a large skill set but no qualifications, he has taken self-shot narrative videos of himself demonstrating his technical skills. Mahara sits there with open arms and gobbles up all this easy to embed content and displays it in an easy to navigate manner. 

Mahara as a local community based LinkedIn anyone? MaharaUK2011 was a great source of information which I shall be sharing within our team, although next time, I'll be getting a train.. needless to say I go stuck in traffic on the way home as well, 10 hours total driving in fact :( That's all for now!

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