Finally got a copy of Mahara up and running on a test server – thanks to a quick reponse from the development team to get some missing files in the release package sorted.

The developers have done a good job at getting the basic infrastructure in place in such a short time, and it seems to have a well thought out architecture, and the interface has a large amount of json based ajax for user interaction, as you would expect any new web application to.

I still haven’t had chance to have a serious play with it, and the ‘views’ side of things still appears to be very ‘beta’ at this stage, but it mostly seems to be doing what the specs suggest it should.

The only concern I have at this stage is if there really is the need to replicate a fully functional blogging tool and social networking system within an eportfolio package. I would have prefered to see more initial development time concentrate on integrating external resources into the portfolio, eg. pulling in rss feeds from blogs, being able to select photos from a flickr account, etc.

http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/02/from_youtube_to_youniversity.html

Worth a read.

I have just started installing an early release of the Mahara eportfolio system that is being developed with funding from the New Zealand Ministry of Education. The specs for it look really good, and it is being put together by a very compentent development team from Catalyst, so I am hopeful that it will live up to expectations. I just need to get my test server rebuilt with a newer version of php to cope with the json functions that they are using to implement the user interface, and hopefully next week I will be able to give some feedback on first impressions.

http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2007/02/08/flexible-learning-in-new-zealand

Some good thoughts here from Leigh. It is this type of thinking that is needed to really turn tertiary education on its head and bring it into the 21st century. The one thing I would add, and unfortunately destroy Leigh’s business model in doing so, is that we also need to seriously question the relevance of traditional assessment and accreditation models.