During the past week, I've had the pleasure to work with several teachers to introduce them to Mahara. As I spend time preparing to present the concept to them, I am struck by the power of the tool and the educational experiences it opens up for students. Admittedly, Mahara is not easy to use, much less is it intuitive. Yet the benefits for students far outweigh the costs.
As we continue to introduce teachers to Mahara, there we have become aware of some needs that have emerged. One of these needs is for an outline of a general workflow for teachers to get students started. As we presented to the staff at Oakman this past week, it became obvious that clicking back and forth, into and out of edit mode on a page edit screen was created a much less desirable experience for teachers. As Chris Kenniburg suggested, it is perhaps easier for teachers and students to focus first on uploading materials, then on the creation of a page once everything is uploaded. This requires a little bit of prior planning of the page, and at some points it may not work best since a page's construction and the need for materials does not necessarily follow a linear timeline. But in general, this seems like the best course of action--especially as we issue recommendations for teachers who are just getting started.