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Key takeaways
✔️ Digital learning offers many benefits, but learners can get easily distracted with so many websites at their fingertips.
✔️ If learners don’t consistently focus on their class activities, they won’t make progress.
✔️ Hāpara Highlights solves the problem of digital distractions by giving educators visibility into what learners are doing online.
✔️ Hāpara Highlights helps learners practice digital citizenship and build executive functioning skills.
Helping learners focus in the classroom has always been a challenge. Kids are kids after all, and they get easily distracted. Now that learning takes place digitally, there are even more obstacles to student focusing. With endless websites online, learners can quickly get off track. This makes it difficult for educators because they can’t see what’s happening on every screen. Plus, learners can click away from an off-task tab if an educator walks by. Even more challenging, during remote learning educators don’t have the option of circulating the room to check on progress.
Hāpara Highlights solves these problems by giving educators visibility into what learners are doing online, in the classroom and remotely. With this visibility, the Highlights monitoring tool makes digital classroom management easy for educators. Highlights’ digital citizenship features also teach learners to have a more positive relationship with devices and the internet.
The importance of student focus
What does student focus look like in a classroom?
Student focus means that learners are actively involved in their class activities. They try to make progress step-by-step, collaborate with group members, reflect, ponder, actively listen or participate in discussions. They may ask questions about the class material and attempt to make connections between topics and ideas. Student focus, though, looks different in every classroom and varies from learner to learner. That’s why it’s so helpful to have a tool like Hāpara Highlights that helps educators accommodate the different ways learners focus.
Why do learners struggle to focus?
Learners have a day to day life full of digital distractions. They’re on devices for class activities, staying connected with family and friends, and entertainment. The article Digital Distraction and Its Impact on Your Health explains that “Continuous exposure to digital interruptions can impair our ability to sustain attention on important tasks.”
Dave LaPoma, Ed.D, the Assistant Principal at Middle School 74 in New York City, notes that wide-open internet access during learning can easily distract middle school students. “Developmentally they have trouble with self-control. When they have all of this at their fingertips, and they know how to access everything, it makes it even harder for them to focus.”
In addition to digital distractions, some children have difficulty focusing due to the following:
- Disorganized, cluttered or noisy environments
- Lack of sleep or poor nutrition
- Anxiety at school
- Not understanding the material
- Not being challenged by the material
- Learning style differences
- Learning challenges such as ADHD, dyslexia, OCD or auditory issues
- Stress or trauma
Why is it important for students to focus and how does it impact their ability to learn?
According to a study in the Journal of Physiology, attention is critical for memory storage in the brain. The American Society for Cell Biology agrees, noting that distractions lead to a reduction in memory.
Of course, some inattention here and there is normal for kids. If students aren’t consistently able to focus their attention on learning, though, their brains won’t store the information and make connections.
It may also affect their future success post-K-12. One study in 2019 found that “inattention at age 6 years was found to be associated with lower annual earnings at age 33 to 35 years.”
Exploring Hāpara Highlights: A student-focusing tool
What is Hāpara Highlights and how do its features develop student focusing skills?
Hāpara Highlights is Chrome browser monitoring software. It allows educators to see what learners are doing on their devices during school instructional time. While there are a variety of reasons students become unfocused, as mentioned, digital distractions are a main cause during online learning. With Highlights, educators can help learners develop focusing skills, stay away from digital distractions, practice digital citizenship and develop executive functioning skills.
The following Highlights features help educators develop learners’ focusing skills:
- Guide browsing
- Share links
- Close tabs
- Message
- Pause screens
- Freeze tabs
- Snaps
- Google Drive visibility
Guide browsing
This Highlights feature allows educators to create structured browsing sessions for individual learners, groups or the class. Educators can create “Focus Sessions” that allow learners to only visit specific websites or pages for a period of time. Or educators can create “Filter Sessions” that restrict learners from visiting specific websites or pages.
Share links
If educators sync their Google Classrooms with Hāpara, they can also share Google Classroom questions, assignments and materials directly to learners’ screens. Rather than asking learners to navigate to Google Classroom and open specific content, they can share it with learners instantly, keeping them focused on the task.
Message
The “Message” feature allows educators to send learners an instant message to their devices. This is a great way to send formative feedback and reminders about staying focused.
Close tabs
This Highlights feature allows educators to close a learner’s off-task tab during class time. When closing the tab, an educator will be prompted to select a reason for closing the tab, providing clear digital citizenship guidance to the learner. If the website is particularly distracting, or the learner needs more structure to stay focused, the educator can block the website for a duration of time.
Pause screens
The “Pause screens” feature allows educators to pause learners’ screens in order to check for understanding, explain a concept or share a reminder. This helps learners pay attention without being distracted by websites on their devices.
Freeze tabs
This Highlights feature is helpful for keeping learners focused on the task at hand. An educator can ask learners to open certain websites and then freeze their tabs. Learners will only be able to visit those websites that are already open.
Snaps
The “Snaps” feature helps educators teach digital citizenship in the moment. Educators can view what learners are doing in their Chrome browser during instructional time and take a Snap of their screen. They may want to do this to show positive digital citizenship choices or to have a conversation about what distracts the learner.
Google Drive visibility
Schools also have the option of providing educators with visibility into learners’ Google Drives. Educators can then check in on learners’ progress in class Google files or help a learner refocus by finding a misplaced file.
What are the main benefits for educators and learners who use Highlights?
Provides real-time visibility
Phil Ledford is an instructional technology coordinator at Elizabethton City Schools in Tennessee. He said, “Before Hāpara things were just so difficult in terms of managing student focus.” He explained that Highlights allows educators to monitor what learners are doing on their devices during class, giving educators the ability to focus learners and redirect them when necessary.
Kathryn Metz is a digital learning coach and teacher at Oak Grove Elementary School in South Carolina. She said, “Highlights allows us to see what the students are working on in real time. We can see students’ current screens and browser tabs to ensure they are working on the correct assignments and to have focused lessons to limit distractions while in class.”
Jim Tobin is a high school science teacher at Maya High School in Arizona. He shared that Highlights’ visibility is especially helpful during online assessments to ensure that learners are focused.
Allows for reflection
Whether educators send learners a message in Highlights or share a Snap with them, it is an opportunity for learners to reflect on their digital citizenship choices. Educators can even use the “Share links” feature in Highlights to send a Google Doc or Google Form asking learners to reflect on their ability to focus during that class period or throughout the school week. They could ask learners to consider what helped them focus, what distracted them and why.
Changes behavior
Lisa Newson is an educator in Williston Basin School District #7 in North Dakota. She said that Highlights helps educators “learn more about how their students may learn better and how they can best help them do so. As importantly, it enables teachers to approach kids about digital citizenship in ways that are natural, and much more effective than a forced conversation or lesson.”
Putting Hāpara Highlights into practice
How do you customize Hāpara Highlights for different learning needs?
Jean O’Brien is a technology integration specialist in Tarrytown Schools in New York. Educators in her district use the “Share links” features in Highlights to differentiate internet browsing to support different learning needs.
Kathryn’s school also uses this feature to differentiate digital instruction. She explains, “To differentiate levels of learning, we put students in groups through Highlights to create small learning groups. They can be directed to group resources that are based on their needs.”
Additionally, educators can create “Guided browsing” sessions for individual learners or groups of learners to tailor browsing needs.
What digital citizenship strategies can you implement with Hāpara Highlights?
Digital safety and privacy
Because educators can view what learners are doing online, they can provide immediate formative feedback related to digital safety. For example, during math class, Connor finds a website about tracking the latest sports scores. This site asks him for personal information. From Highlights, his teacher Mr. Jackson can see that he is on this site and close it for Connor. A digital citizenship reason for closing the site will appear on Connor’s screen. Mr. Jackson can then send Connor a private message using the “Message” feature in Highlights to give him additional feedback about why the site is not safe.
Digital wellness
Kids need practice understanding how to balance their time spent online and make positive choices. Having conversations with learners in the moment is a great way to reinforce digital wellness topics. For example, Ms. Hernández, asks her classes periodically about their relationship with technology and how it affects them. They have told her that a certain gaming site is pulling their focus away from the class activities they should be doing. She adds this to a Highlights guided browsing “Filter Session” template that she uses day to day to help the class stay engaged with their class activities.
Digital responsibility
In Highlights, Ms. Chen saw that a group of learners in her class were “chatting” back and forth in a Google Doc and using inappropriate language. She can intervene by sending the group a private message in Highlights or speaking to them directly.
How does Hāpara Highlights help learners build executive functioning skills?
Throughout K-12 learners are developing executive functioning skills. Highlights gives educators the tools they need to help learners build these skills. For example, the “Guide browsing” and “close tabs” feature provide the structure learners need to regulate their impulses and manage their time. The “Pause screens” and “Freeze tabs” features give learners opportunities to strengthen their attention skills.
