We learned a lot in this chapter about why Mahara ePortfolios are useful.

Specifically, we understood what an ePortfolio is and looked at possible uses of Mahara. We discussed the importance of personalized, reflective, and collaborative learning and learned what is so special about the Mahara ePortfolio.

We also looked at some real-life Mahara sites. Hopefully, you became a member of the Mahara community by joining yourself up at http://mahara.org. If you did, you would have had a browse around mahara.org and looked at some of the useful features. Finally, some of you would have gotten an initial feel for Mahara by clicking around in the demo area http://demo.mahara.org and also in http://foliofor.me or one of the other free ePortfolio sites mentioned.

Now that we've seen the big picture as to why Mahara matters, you're probably keen to start working in your live Mahara environment. First of all, it's a good idea to get started by adding some of your information to your portfolio, and have a go at organizing your own profile page — which is the topic of the next chapter.