E-portfolio: Mahara

Exams have become part and parcel of any education system. But is it just? An exam is just one time photo! How many talents which students achieve or master, yet they can’t show them during exams? A portfolio is an example where a student can show many skills which are not easily tested during exams!

Nowadays we speak of an e-portfolio. Today we present Mahara: an open source modular e-portfolio system. It can easily be integrated with other educational programs or Learning Management System (LMS).

In one link one can find several links to look for particular help. One finds a musical tune of Mahara too! Link to Mahara. If you prefer more youtube videos for help then go here. More youtube videos can be found here. The best advantage of Mahara is that it is student centered. A student can simply not only present the final product but present as well the struggles and challenges faced during the duration of the action taken.

Rogo – An e-Assessment Management System

One of the objectives in teaching is to have a reliable assessment of students. Students and parents too would like to know the true level of students.

Can open source help in this area? Of course it can! Today we are presenting Rogo. Rogo is a leading e-assessment system that is scalable, secure, useable and extensible.

If you’re interested in quickly seeing a demo, then go to: https://rogo-demo.nottingham.ac.uk/demo/register.php.

If you want to download the open source license go to: https://bitbucket.org/rogoOOS/rog/get/6.4.1.zip

For documentation please go to: https://rogo-eassessment-docs.atlassian.net/

If one prefers Youtube videos then go to: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rogo+assessment.

If any educator would like to see any case studies, please go to: https://www.eciu.org/case-study/rogo-an-e-assessment-management-system.

Going for open software in schools

We’ve been writing about open source software for some years now. We’re making more popular, programs or operating systems, which otherwise would have been unknown by the majority of our readers. This is because other companies have lots of money which could be spent in advertising. Open Source does not have enough money to do the same kind of advertising. Hence it relies on the good will of those who have tried it and were satisfied 100%

What about changing completely and going for open source? In some countries it’s still not possible as it is centralised by government or an education department. In other countries they are truly free to roam about and go for a different choice as long as it helps the education of students.

We are presenting the case of a school which was very successful in going for open source but a simple google search would lead to more examples. In all cases, there is no need of a consensus from a large majority. In many cases it all started with just one single person who was totally convinced of the need for change in our IT choices! Read this.

In a summary we are going to outline some advantages for open source.

Open source gives the power to students, teachers and parents to change, fine-tune or re-program according to the school needs. This has two aspects: it gives students the power to change programs according to their wishes. In the meantime they would be preparing themselves for the working world as they would have some practical experience to when it comes working in the IT department. Lastly, any program used would be more efficient, because if not changes can be made.

Open Source gives the students the opportunity to study programs and learn how they are programmed as nothing is hidden! On the other hand students will only learn as long as they have a hands on experience. Open Source provides enough hands on experience. Propriety programs would not allow anyone to tinker with their program! Besides, if the company goes bankrupt, nobody can continue their work. This is the typical case of being locked out! In contrast, Open Source programs can be continued or adapted by anybody in the world!

As an educator, I hate to use programs which are costly or which are not available to students. We use open source, so if the student wants to use the same program, there are no restrictions (financially or legally)! Students can download open source programs for free and as many times they wish to. Practically it’s useless to keep an extra copy because most of them change frequently and there is no limit as to how many times one can download.

The biggest hurdle is that when it comes to IT most people are very lazy. They are used to some programs and they feel threatened if the IT department changes their favourite programs! Others, never thought that a pc could work without their famous operating system! It was a truly complete surprise if other unknown operating system run their pc!

Another hurdle would be that the teachers responsible for change would need a lot of time to select the right programs and to become familiar with. Ideally they would be financially compensated.