Mahara another E Tool concept? or more

Mahara is a fully featured electronic portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online communities. Mahara provides you with the tools to set up a personal learning and development environment. It has fa
Useful for students for the following reasons:
· Write diary entries online (Blogs) for assessment purposes.
· Upload documents and link them to certain blog entries.
· Join Groups and change privacy settings to suit student’s preference.
· Have this e-portfolio through your entire course and create different blogs with different views.
My Files:
· Allows file uploads (PDF, Word Documents, Excel Documents, Images, etc)
· This is a central place for ALL your files on your Mahara page.
· If you create a blog you can pull in different files from this repository.
My Views:
· Allows the user to made "VIEW groups". This allows them to set certain groups to certain VIEWS and blocking out others from seeing particular files/blogs.
· You may create as many different Views as you like and reuse your Artifacts, even giving them different titles for different audiences.
· Views can also be used to submit work for feedback or assessment to a Controlled Group.
My Blogs:
· Allows the user to create an 'online diary' or 'blog'.
· Each Blog can include a title, description, tags.
· You can split the blog up and create a number of POSTS in each blog OR made it one large blog There are many overlapping technologies which can be classed under different areas of learning and teaching.
There are many E tools that student can use to collaborate and communicate through the use Google sites and Google docs.
Google Sites – Can be use as Wiki or a place to organise group assignments and add comments. Google Docs - For Online collaboration can use spreadsheets and documents

In the past, I was involved in an asignment discussing and exploring the effectiveness of E Porfolio (see SlideShare Posting for more details). I understood it very well on how (older)students can create thier own and stakeholders are able to access student progress etc. By using Mahara it make it simplier because students are able to use other e tools to suit thier needs.
I was lucky enough to log in to "my Mahara" and chat to someone about it. He was just logging off . So - for group projects and assignments Mahara or Moodle its another dicision on which is better to use...posting I have to make.
This E- Tools are very much intertwine with one another. Come along with me in this thingking... dare you to get it!

Early Childhood Thinking:
Like.... dust + more dust= dirt + water =mud and more!!! mud x2 + sunlight = ?? you guess a mud brick (with careful nurturing and science with it) Then the 3 little pigs made a nice brick house... and more! Just let your childlike imagination go...
E tools in 21st century I get it I get it!!!
Cheers
Mary-Ann

Mahara an Open souce Porfolio: Retrived December 6, 2009. from:http://mahara.org/features