Week 5

I am glad i went to a "Mahara" session at the Residential School in Rockhamptom, looking at it now, it is just one less thing to worry about among the establishment of blogs, wikis, aggrigators and so on.

After exploring the site basically, I now understand its basic layout and functions. Mahara has the ability to be a social networking forum, a multimedia centre for display, entertainment & education and also a tool for gaining employment by displaying resumes, lists of achievement and so on.



Creating an avatar was a fun experience. To incorporate an educational element was not an easy decision. ( as a musician training to be a music teacher I would love to make the avatar play the trumpet or guitar but I suppose that requires some technical animation )

I created an avatar to speak Spanish, but then i wrote phonetically for the avatar to say, "I am sorry I do not speak English". Technically, I have no LOTE qualifications, but showing this difference in phonetics could help students to understand the difference between languages; helping them to grasp better concepts of pronunciation, grammatical structure and colloquial expressions.

Using the friendly character of a cat could prove an effective "hook" to students as well. I myself enjoyed the "Borat" avatar created by Scot, but it would have been cool if he had tried an impersonation....