personalizing mahara views with custom skins

mahara UK11

Gregor Anelj Gimnazija Ledina, Ljubljana, Slovenia gregor.anzelj@gmail.com

portfolio modes of usage

Assessment For assessing or matching against specied criteria as in a qualication or job specication, e.g., evidence for a key skill Presentation For presenting information or achievements, often to particular audiences, e.g., selected design drawings to show to a client Transition For providing evidence and records at transition points for transfer of pupil information from, e.g., primary to secondary school
Source: BECTA, 2006

Learning For personal and group information, related to learning, reection and self assessment, e.g., achievements towards goals and teacher feedback

portfolio modes of usage

Mahara can be used for all four modes:
Assessment Transition Learning Presentation

The first three modes should use more formal look/design or look/design is not so important The essence of the presentation is expressing ones personality and creativity

personalizing - themes
What about Mahara themes? They are great, but
They dont express users personality and/or creativity They are hard to create for regular users They change the look of entire Mahara, which sometimes can be a good thing, but

personalizing - skins
Skins offer, what themes cant:
Users can express their creativity or express themselves Thus their views are more personalized The creation of skins is form based, so its easy for regular users to create them They only change the look/design of single view Mahara can retain the default theme, which is mostly used in books, tutorial screenshots, etc.

skins features
There can be user and site skins Skins can be public or private Users can add other users public skins to their favorites similar as in web browsers Skins can be exported and imported Skins are created by using web forms no need for knowing CSS, HTML, etc.

skins features & roadmap

Admin users can add custom fonts, that can be used with skins Different web browsers support embedding fonts into the web page differently Admin user must provide font in different formats using Font Squirrel is the best option for that I plan to add support for Google Web Fonts, which I discovered lately

questions, comments, feedback

You can ask me/tell me right after the demo or use:
Mahara official forums Email: gregor.anzelj@gmail.com Twitter

skins demonstration
If you wish to try it yourself, log-in to my development mahara setup at http://mahara.ledina.org/DEV/
Username: test Password: test140test

Lets see some skin action!