Lea Senica, Osnovna šola Dobje

Mahara is software that enables us to create an e-portfolio, blog, curriculum vitae, and represents a social network. It provides users with tools to create a development environment for personal and professional education. It is a domain of older pupils, but with the proper management of pupils already possible in fifth grade. In activities that I represent, I joined three projects of the National Institute of Education: the pilot project the EUfolio (Mahara), the project Induction of e-content development services by using tablet computers and Reading literacy project. The reason for choosing these activities was pupils’ weak reading technique. I wanted to improve it with the help of two tools: Mahara as a web application, which was used for planning the activities, observing their progress and critical friendship; and tablet computers, that were used for recording their reading and for planning the activities in Mahara, wherever and whenever. Since the activities were well planned and Mahara supported formative assessment, the results were positive. Pupils’ notes were more moderate (these are fifth graders) as they would be in the case of older students, but nevertheless they have learned to work with Mahara, write down goals that they want to achieve, think about their progress and critically comment with classmates. They have acquired competences that will serve them in their personal and professional education.