About the Authors

Derrin Kent (http://derr.in) graduated in Education Studies in 1988 and has worked in the Education Sector in the UK and Overseas ever since, gaining a Master's Level Diploma in Adult Teaching from the University of Cambridge in 1995. Derrin has been an amateur website designer for over 10 years and has worked with Moodle since version 1.5. Derrin has already worked as the Technical Reviewer for two books on Moodle published by Packt.

A big Linux fanboy, Derrin set up an open-source software hosting, configuring, and training business (http://tdm.info) in 2007 and qualified formally as a Linux-Certified Professional in 2008.

TDM became the second official Mahara Partner Organization in the UK in 2008 and now professionally host, configure, and train both end users (learners) and software administrators (geeks) to work with Mahara sites.

Derrin believes strongly in the value of social-constructionist learning approaches and is a committed advocate of learner-owned data and of Portfolio-based learning approaches.

Derrin speaks Spanish at home with his beautiful Peruvian wife, Ely, and his two wonderful bilingual kids, Salvador and Micaela.

Richard Hand is a Mahara platform manager, module developer, and theme/configuration designer for TDM (http://tdm.info). Richard also supports and develops for other open-source software platforms including Moodle, Drupal, and Joomla. He graduated with a first class honors degree in Computer Science from the University of Bristol in 2008 and won a national (UK) award for "Best Website Design" for one of his TDM Joomla sites in 2009 (selected from 2000+ competitor sites).

Glenys Bradbury is a Cambridge University graduate and is now a Prince2-qualified Project Manager and an LSIS E-guide who works as a Mahara (and Moodle) learning-designer, site-administrator, and end-user trainer for TDM (http://tdm.info). Glen has extensive working experience as a trainer and manager in both educational and business environments. She is a friendly and sensitive change-manager who really knows how to make a personal development planning / knowledge management implementation process come to life.

Meg Kent has worked continuously as a corporate manager and director in a variety of Work-Based Learning contexts since the late 1980s. She is now a Mahara (and Moodle) learning-designer and end-user trainer for TDM (http://tdm.info). Also a Work-Based Learning assessor in her own right, Meg successfully blends support for individuals' achievement of government-funded qualifications alongside the development of their practical Web 2.0 skills.