Kineo announces an extended fee-free e-portfolio service for New Zealand schools
Kineo Pacific delighted to announce the continuation of the free MyPortfolio service, to all New Zealand schools, until (at least) the end of 2013. 'We're very excited to have the support and be working with the Ministry of Education on truly 21st century learning technologies. To our knowledge, a nationally provided e-portfolio and social learning network for schools is a world first', said Kineo Pacific Director, Richard Wyles.
MyPortfolio is a
nationally available e-portfolio cloud service that runs on the
open source e-portfolio software, Mahara. Mahara is one of the
world's most popular e-portfolio systems with 11,300 members of the
Mahara.org community, and 24 official partner organisations
providing implementation, hosting and support services. Mahara has
been translated into 13 languages and has approximately 28,000
visitors monthly to www.mahara.org.
E-portfolios provide learners with an easy way of recording their
learning experiences, achievements and evidence of learning.
Learners who have used e-portfolios report having a greater
awareness of their skills, greater confidence in their abilities,
and feeling more independent as learners.
Learners today often create and use digital content. E.g. videos,
audio clips, stories, photos, learning reflections, assignments,
and other learning materials they source or create. Being able to
easily link and integrate all these resources into a portfolio
enables learners to create their own personal learning space in a
safe and nurturing environment.
"MyPortfolio's learning space has similar functionality to the
most popular of social networks so the learning curve is minimal",
says Richard Wyles. "The key difference is that the features are
focused around learning.
Since July 2007, Wellington based companies Kineo Pacific and Catalyst IT have led the
Mahara project, and provide the My Portfolio service supported by
the Ministry of Education. The service is provided free of charge
to schools in New Zealand. Currently around 350 schools have signed
up with MyPortfolio and approximately 12,000 students and teachers
are using it.
Unlike some social media sites, the content created on MyPortfolio
is by default private and the users (students and teachers alike)
decide who can access any parts of the content. In choosing to
share specific parts of a portfolio the options include: teacher/s,
peer/s, a project group, a class, within a school, across schools,
between two people etc.
Schools are also realising the importance of teacher portfolios
and often encourage or even require their staff to establish their
own e-portfolios for professional development and appraisal
purposes. This also ensures staff familiarity with the application
and teaching approach best suited to e-portfolio use.
MyPortfolio is a stand-alone system that can be integrated into a
wider virtual learning environment. The Ministry of Education is
currently scoping the requirements to enable interoperability
between MyPortfolio and the most popular Learning Management
Systems (LMS) used in New Zealand. This will mean schools could use
MyPortfolio alongside their LMS and easily transfer data between
them. In choosing MyPortfolio as a national solution the Ministry
of Education was impressed with the student ownership and
transferability features of MyPortfolio. I.e. the e-portfolio can
remain with the student as the student moves from one school to
another or even to higher education.
Further information about Kineo Pacific can be found here.