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Supporting a diverse population of learners
Joliet District 86 includes fifteen elementary schools, four junior high schools, one early childhood center and one alternative school, serving over 9,600 learners. The student population includes 68% Hispanic students, 20% Black students, 8% White students and 4% multi-ethnic students. According to the Illinois Report Card, 95% of students in the district are considered low-income, meaning they are eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunches, live in substitute care or their families receive public aid. Additionally, 33% of students are English Learners, and 17% of students have individualized education plans (IEPs).
The district philosophy on technology
The district provides each learner with a school-issued Chromebook, an initiative the district fast-tracked because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kim Knigge is the Coordinator of Instructional Technology at Joliet District 86. While learners have access to devices, Kim says the district is intentional about integrating technology into instruction and learning post-pandemic.
“Our philosophy with technology is that it needs to be connected to the curriculum. It needs to be connected to something they’re teaching students, and it needs to support it in a way that either makes it more engaging or more efficient. We’re not just doing technology just to do technology,” Kim explains.
Kim and her team have worked with educators to embed technology into curriculum maps. The goal is for educators to be able to identify where technology can truly enhance instruction.
Not all technology fits into that criteria. “This is the flashy new tool, and it’s really cool. But is it the best? Is it the best tool for the job right now?” she emphasizes.
Veronica Hatch, a fifth grade educator at Isaac Singleton Elementary School agrees. “Technology has to enhance learning. It either has to increase the rate of how I can accomplish something, or it has to be something that is benefiting the student in how they’re gaining knowledge and skills.”
How educators teach digital citizenship
Because students use Chromebooks for learning, digital citizenship is an important skill to teach. Maida Cornelio-Sauseda is a fifth grade educator at A.O. Marshall Elementary School. She starts the school year by talking with her learners about how to behave in a social setting with technology. The school also has a social worker who visits the class every two weeks and spends time on digital citizenship. For example, they discuss safety around sharing information online.
Maida also talks with the class in morning meetings about cyberbullying and has additional discussions around digital footprints. Learners in the district also use an online digital citizenship curriculum program.
Why they balance screen time
For Maida and Veronica, it’s important that they balance screen time with social interactions in the classroom. For instance, Maida’s learners are on devices for no more than an hour a day. They use Chromebooks for webquests, district assessments, Google Slides presentations or Canva projects.
She says, “I want to talk to them. A lot of times they’re not used to social interaction. Maybe people aren’t talking to them at home, and they don’t play with friends in the traditional sense we think of when you go outside and play. So I try to actually talk to them. We’re humans. We can speak to each other, you know; we don’t just have to text.”
Veronica says, “I appreciate having a monitor that my district gave me and my laptop. But there are times when I feel like my nose is in the screen, and I need to be off screen with my students, and so it’s a real balancing act.”
How educators manage their digital classroom with Hāpara
When learners do use their Chromebooks for projects, assessments and digital citizenship lessons, educators need a way to keep them focused on those activities — at school or at home during remote learning days. That’s why educators across Joliet District 86 use Hāpara Highlights to manage their digital classroom when learners are online.
Kim says, “Hāpara was a huge win for us. Teachers were really desperate for something like that. It’s a new level of classroom management that they have to deal with, so we had to give them a tool to support that, and that’s what Hāpara has been.”
Visibility into learning on Chrome browsers
Across grade levels, Hāpara Highlights gives Joliet District 86 educators visibility into what learners are doing in their Chrome browsers during class. Many of them pull up Highlights on one screen, while they teach from a second screen, helping them manage their digital classroom with ease.
Opening websites directly onto learners’ screens
It can be challenging to get learners where they need to be online. That’s why, especially at the elementary grade levels, educators love using Hāpara Highlights to open websites directly onto learners’ screens.
Veronica shares “I appreciate Hāpara the most when my kids are taking a Google Forms test or quiz, and when we’re doing e-learning from home.” For example, she told her class that they were going to take a quiz on chapters four through six of their class novel to see if they understood the basics. She used Hāpara to send out the quiz link directly to their Chromebooks.
Maida also uses the “Share links” feature in Hāpara Highlights to send a website link to learners. “If I need them to fill out a Google Form, I can send it to them, and there’s no issue of ‘I don’t know where it is. I didn’t type this correctly.’ It’s just ‘bam.’ It takes them there.”
Guiding learners’ browsing
With Hāpara Highlights, educators are able to monitor learners’ progress and guide their browsing. One way educators in the district do this is by using Focus and Filter Sessions to give learners structured browsing experiences. They either focus learners on specific websites or filter out websites during class.
Getting learners’ attention when on devices
Maida uses the Pause Screens feature in Hāpara Highlights when learners are on their devices and she needs their attention. “If I need their attention, it is hard for them to pull away from what they’re doing because they’re focused on something.”
When she turns on Pause Screens, though, it sends learners a five-second alert. “It’s not a shock to their system. They know they have five seconds to finish what they’re doing,” Maida says. She also appreciates that it pauses their screens for only five minutes. “By the time I’ve gotten their attention to what they need to do, it’s back on. We’re back to where we need to be.”
Supporting small group and independent learning simultaneously
Educators in the district are also encouraged to engage learners in small group work, and Kim says that Hāpara Highlights has been transformative for educators. They can pull learners into a group to work with them, as the rest of the class works independently, and have Highlights on their screen to make sure independent learners are focused.
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A more gracious way to manage the digital classroom
Veronica uses Current Screens in Hāpara Highlights most often because she can instantly see what learners are viewing on their Chromebooks. If a student is on YouTube watching videos unrelated to learning, she closes it but also sends the student an individual message using the Announce feature. She’ll write a message to check in such as, “I really want to trust you, but are you focused right now?”
She continues, “I give them a behavior prompt. I try very hard not to make it punitive. It’s ‘Are you making good choices? This is your choice.’ And they respond pretty well. If I see a child has opened another tab for a dictionary, though, I’m praising them. ‘Good job using your resources.’”
Maida also uses the Announce feature in Highlights to message learners individually. “I don’t have to call out a child in front of everybody in the class. It’s a matter of, ‘Is this really appropriate for what we’re doing? Let’s get back to that later.’ So it’s more personal. They know they shouldn’t have been there, [so if I’m only closing their off-task tabs], we’re just going to have this ongoing battle.”
She continues, “But if I let them know personally, I think they respect that they’re not being called out. Then they do redirect, and they’ll think twice about going on again. So I think that it’s more proactive, and I do think that it’s a more gracious way. I’m not saying YouTube’s bad. It’s just not what we need to do right now.”
Differentiating instruction and personalizing learning with Hāpara
Maida uses Focus Sessions in Hāpara to focus learners on a webquest or particular websites. She also sets up Focus Sessions for individual learners for interventions and differentiated instruction. She can send a learner a particular assignment that is just for them, and it opens directly onto their device.
Why the district switched to Hāpara from another tool
Prior to 2020, Joliet District 86 used a tool that was, in Kim’s words, “messy.” The team had a difficult time managing it on the backend, and it didn’t always work the way it was supposed to, causing unnecessary headaches. During the 2019-2020 school year, the technology team realized they needed a solution that was more seamless.
In January of 2020 the district piloted Hāpara Highlights with third through eighth grade educators. They introduced it before the winter break, and then the technology coaches spent time in each school giving educators a mini-training. They realized Hāpara Highlights was the seamless solution they needed — easy for both the district technology team and classroom educators to use.
Veronica shares, “I can see the screens, the features are user-friendly, and it’s so easy to make a class announcement. It’s so easy to share a link. It’s so easy to send a message to an individual child. It’s intuitive. I did not need training for that. I love it.”
She also notes how flexible Hāpara Highlights is, explaining that when a colleague has been out for an extended period of time, she can easily step in to monitor the other class’ online progress.
How students feel about Chrome browser monitoring
Veronica explains that because educators have consistently used Hāpara, the elementary school learners are comfortable with having browser monitoring. “These children stayed at home for a whole year during COVID. I think they were in first or second grade. So Hāpara is ingrained into their [routines]. It would be like asking them, ‘How do you feel about an apple or an orange?’”
Maida tells her learners that she uses browser monitoring not as a “Big Brother” tool but to keep them safe. “It’s also about making sure that we’re not looking at things that we had no intention of looking at. So they do look at it as a safety feature, and I don’t think they look at it as being oppressive. I think they look at it like, ‘We’re trying to protect you.’”
How parents feel about educators using Hāpara Highlights
Maida says that during e-learning days when the school building has to close, parents love that educators can manage the children’s Chromebooks and keep them focused on learning. This is especially helpful if parents are home with multiple children on a device at the same time. “They’re very grateful that we’re able to monitor what they’re doing online in their home.”
Kim emphasizes, “It also helps assure parents that the district is prioritizing online safety. It’s a great thing to be able to tell parents that we have this in place to make sure their students are staying safe.”
Why Hāpara Highlights has been a game-changer
Kim says that educators across the district are happy with Hāpara Highlights as a digital classroom management solution. “They love it. They absolutely love it. It’s a tool we needed. It was a big win for our team. People are excited about the ease of use. That’s something that’s just been a game changer for classroom management when it comes to technology, because we can’t be everywhere in the room all the time.”
“It’s been a big win for us — teachers love it,” says Kim.
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