An Adventure in Learning
What happened to student privacy?
With all of the concern for student safety online, many in the industry have forgotten about a student’s right to privacy. How does a school guarantee that students are doing what they are supposed to be doing online, and provide a safe environment for doing so? The answer is twofold.
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Moving toward visible learning
In project based learning, students learn by working for an extended period of time to research and answer an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem or challenge (PBL Works). There are a lot of misconceptions about PBL and what it is.
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Project Based Learning + Hāpara = deeper learning
In project based learning, students learn by working for an extended period of time to research and answer an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem or challenge (PBL Works). There are a lot of misconceptions about PBL and what it is.
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Chatting in Google Docs: An opportunity to teach digital citizenship
How can you tell if students are chatting in Google Docs? Using Hāpara Dashboard and Highlights makes it easy to see what learners are up to and whether or not they are chatting in Google Docs. Some learners like to start a Google Doc and share it with friends, and type their messages to each other in the Doc.
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Coaching as an integral part of your district’s tech transformation
Nothing about transformation is one-size-fits-all, but one thing is clear: tech coaches can make a world of difference when it comes to improving teaching and learning, implementing tools that support pedagogy and putting students first.
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Mastery-based grading: from minimum mindset to a growth mindset
Student agency may seem like just another edu-term to add to the already crowded edtech encyclopedia housed in your brain, but this one is here to stay!
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Heading back to school with Hapara
There’s a lot going on in the beginning of a new school year, and we want to make sure that you and your staff head back to school with Hapara on the right foot!
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How student agency will transform your classroom
Student agency may seem like just another edu-term to add to the already crowded edtech encyclopedia housed in your brain, but this one is here to stay!
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Make the most out of your trip to Philly during ISTE 2019!
As amazing as ISTE 2019 will be, make sure to build in time to enjoy Philadelphia! Here are some great suggestions for things to do in Philly.
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Hapara’s ISTE 2019 sessions not to miss
The full ISTE sessions schedule includes over 1,000 sessions and can be a little overwhelming, so we’ve pulled out some of the sessions we’re looking forward to the most!
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Google tools that will amp up your Workspace
You already know that Hapara and G Suite tools work seamlessly together, so why not add these Google tools to your Workspace to help build engagement?
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What we learned at ISTE 2018
This year at ISTE 2018 we sent our good friend Julian Daher out with a camera to learn more about the latest trends and biggest ideas that were brought up in ISTE sessions.
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Hapara’s ISTE 2018 sessions not to miss
The full ISTE sessions schedule includes over 1,000 sessions and can be a little overwhelming, so we’ve pulled out some of the sessions we’re looking forward to the most!
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Wrapping up the year in a 1:1 district – End of year procedures you should know
1:1 and other tech programs add a few additional to-dos to your end of year procedures. Especially when your programs are new, it’s easy to feel like you missed a step or forgot to do something important. Creating a list of everything you need to do to close out the year and get prepped for next year is key.
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A beginner’s guide to ISTE
ISTE is a conference like no other. It will inspire you, motivate you, energize you, and refresh your practice, but it can also be quite daunting. As someone who has attended five of these in the last 10 years, I have learned a few tricks to make the experience a bit easier.
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Deep learning: co-constructing success criteria
Our friend and Hapara Champion Trainer Julian Daher continues to share his expertise on Deep Learning in the latest video in our Teaching with Technology series. This week, Julian discusses one of his favorite practices – co-creating success criteria with learners.
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Collaborative professional development with Hapara Workspace
Ever since Hapara allowed the inclusion of teachers as students in Workspace, Heather Rentz and I have been utilizing it to create collaborative professional development sessions for teachers across our school district.
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Deep Learning – Pedagogical Practice with Julian Daher
In this first deep dive video, Julian shares how Deep Learning pedagogies have shifted the way he teaches French reading comprehension. He also explains how digital tools like Hapara Workspace and Google Read and Write make these shifts possible.
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Using Hapara Workspace with Google Classroom
Hapara and Google Classroom are a great pair. Mike de Leon, a big Hapara Workspace user and put together a great video for us about how to use Google Classroom with Workspace to better meet learners’ needs.
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How a microcredentials hub supports teacher learning communities
At my school, I noticed that while most of our weekly Friday PD was relevant to everyone (e.g. updates to our testing software), there wasn’t much in terms of choice or voice for our educators. Thinking about the power of skill-sharing in our learning communities, I created a microcredentials hub.
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Fostering Teacher Collaboration in a Digital World
Today, highly effective educators and schools push teacher collaboration so that it has become a norm. The internet has revolutionized education by changing the question from why should we collaborate to how can we foster professional collaboration in a digital world?
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Teaching with Technology: An Intro to Deep Learning
We’re back with our next Teaching with Technology video with Julian Daher! This week, Julian gives us an intro to Deep Learning and what it looks like in the Ottawa Catholic School Board.
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Building meaningful relationships in a digital classroom
In a digital classroom, it is true that, if not used intentionally, technology can add a cold and disconnecting element to our classrooms. However, it also possible for technology to be used in ways that add value to our relationships and bring teachers and students closer to together.
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Hapara stands for student voice
If you visited Hapara.com on Saturday, March 24, 2018, you may have noticed things looked a little different. We decided to blackout our website to show our support for student voice.
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Teaching with Technology: Using tech for second language immersion
We’re back with the second video in our Teaching with Technology series! This week, Hapara Champion Trainer and OCSB educator Julian Daher lets us in on how he incorporates tech tools into his French as a second language immersion classes.
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Creating a climate for student collaboration and feedback
My vision for my classroom is to foster an environment where students are comfortable making mistakes and sharing work with peers. The question then becomes, how do I do this? How do I shift from researching and implementing effective feedback strategies to using them to transform my classroom?
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New video series: Teaching with Technology with Julian Daher
We are excited to announce a new video series with Hapara Champion Trainer Julian Daher from the Ottawa Catholic School Board on teaching with technology. Julian will be sharing short videos with us every week to show what teaching with technology looks like in his classroom, and how he uses both online and offline tools and methods to support learners.
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Offering student choice and voice with playlist based instruction
In essence, playlists give students choice over when, how and what they do to reach an academic objective. In a traditional lesson, students have two choices: follow the teacher’s directions verbatim, or choose to misbehave. That’s not much of a choice at all.
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Using Flipgrid & HyperDocs with Hapara Workspace to promote student choice
So what is it about Flipgrid and HyperDocs that educators find so appealing? I think the draw is that they can be used to empower students by providing them with voice and choice in the classroom which, in turn, leads to increased engagement.
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How technology helps with learner feedback
One of the many benefits of technology is that it helps us with all of these aspects of learner feedback. Providing feedback becomes even easier when Hapara is added to the mix!
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What feedback is and isn’t
We know how important feedback is to help guide student learning, but why does feedback seem to be incredibly impactful sometimes, but make no significant difference other times?
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Tips and tricks for providing formative feedback in your digital classroom
Providing quick and meaningful formative feedback is one of the most important strategies teachers can leverage to propel student learning.
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The results: Hapara’s holiday Workspace contest!
Thank you to everyone who participated, but because this is a contest, there can only be one winner! And that winner is….
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Learning through the holidays: Hapara Workspace holiday contest
We know our Hapara educators are masters of creating lessons that are timely, engaging and impactful, like this Global Holidays Workspace, and we want to see what you’ve got!
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How to create interactive AVID e-binders using Hapara and G Suite
If you’re an AVID school that’s gone or is going 1:1 and is using Hapara and Google Suite for Education, check out this brief tutorial I created on how you can create eBinders at your school!
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Helping elementary learners build digital skills with G Suite and Hapara
We’re in a changing world. Kids are privy to technology as soon as their fine motor skills are well enough developed to “tap” an app on a tablet or iPad. As educators, it is our duty to leverage digital skills in a manner that supports student success and confidence.
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Resources for National Day on Writing
Every year on October 20th, the National Council of Teachers of English celebrates the National Day on Writing by bringing people across the country together to share #WhyIWrite.
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Teaching digital citizenship year round
Digital Citizenship Week is quickly approaching and we’ve been thinking a lot about what exactly digital citizenship is, and the many pieces of our lives it encompasses.
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Stop policing: how to positively engage with learners working online
When learners work online it can be scary for educators. Even with firewalls and filters in place, we all know that within a few minutes of opening their devices, students can find themselves on websites where they shouldn’t be – either because it’s dangerous, or just off task.
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Why we visit schools
At Hapara, we believe that education is a fundamentally human endeavour, and that the tools we build should support teachers as they endeavour to engage more deeply and strengthen learning relationships with their students.
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Pat Snedden, Chair of Manaiakalani Education Trust, honoured for work in digital education
Pat Snedden, the Executive Chair and founder of the Manaiakalani Education Trust – and one of Hapara’s earliest supporters – was recently made a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to Education and Māori. We are so happy to send our congratulations for this well-deserved honour.
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Three ways to use Hapara beyond the classroom
The transition to teaching and learning in the cloud has led to interesting challenges and opportunities for both classroom teachers and other educators in the school building. As learning moves online, educators are finding new ways to manage learner work and ensure that everyone in the building is working together to create great learning experiences.
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Learn from the best: Hapara Champion blog roundup
The Hapara Champion program brings together educators from around the world to learn more about the pedagogy behind Hapara’s tools and to support each other in making the shift to digital learning. Since its launch in 2015, the program has had over 300 graduates, many of whom are still connected and learning from each other every day.
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Make summer professional learning more flexible with Hapara Workspace
One of our favorite things about Hapara Workspace (other than how easy it makes it to provide differentiated digital learning experiences) is that it can serve as a hub for collaborative learning for teachers as well as students.
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Hapara’s ISTE 2017 sessions not to miss
This year at ISTE we’re trying something different. We’re skipping our big Hapara booth and sending a team of staff who will be in the Google and Microsoft partner booths. We’ll also be on the floor meeting with new and existing customers!
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Better together: Streamline digital learning with Hapara & Google Classroom
As both an early adopter of Hapara and a Hapara Champion Trainer, teachers frequently ask me why they should use Hapara when they are already invested in Google Classroom. My advice is to select the features from both tools based on your needs.
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Three ways to make the shift to personalized PD
Over the past few years, technology has enabled educators to shift towards creating personalized learning experiences and allowing learners greater agency in the classroom. But what about teachers?
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One year in – five lessons from the Enhanced Learning Model
One way that Wolf Creek Public Schools is working to provide learning experiences that resonate with our students is through the implementation of the Enhanced Learning Model (ELM). This learning model blends high quality digital course content with face-to-face teacher supports in the classroom.
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What to read this summer – Hapara’s 2017 summer reading list for educators
One of our favorite summer pastimes is tackling our summer reading lists (they’re not just for kids!), so we put together a list of some of the titles we’ll be tackling this summer and that we think the educators in our lives will enjoy as well.
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How to get started with Hapara Workspace
Digital learning environments provide unique ways to engage learners and to create more personalized learning experiences, but it can be tough to know how to get started. We’ve put together this Workspace Cheat Sheet to help you set up a digital learning environment that engages all of the learners in your classroom.
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We’re off to see the wizard: visualizing the road to digital adoption
Your school district has decided to go all in on education technology. Your teachers are using G-Suite and/or other cloud-based tools in their classrooms, and every learner has a device. Maybe you’ve even seen slides about the SAMR model.
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Education game changers: EdTech to watch in 2017
Recently, Hapara CEO and co-founder Jan Zawadzki and Hapara’s VP of Business Development, Chris Buja joined Jim Connor on Game Changers Silicon Valley to discuss some of the new technologies that are currently making their way into the education system, including Hapara.
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Using data to measure digital literacy
Digital literacy is not a new term. It’s not a buzzword that will fade away in a few years, it is a critical part of teaching learners the skills they need to be successful. Most of us interact with a computer of some sort on a daily basis.
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What’s trending from iNACOL 2016
We talk to teachers and educators every day, but attending conferences like iNACOL really amplifies their conversations and reveals some of the big trends happening in K12 education. Below are the top 4 topics we heard trending at iNACOL 2016.
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Measuring impact: The transition to digital learning
The transition to digital learning gains more traction every day. So far, over 2,300 district superintendents have signed the Office of Education Technology’s Future Ready Pledge, committing their districts to making digital learning a priority.
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Teaching in the cloud: How to be present with learners
In order to create an environment that is safe and conducive to learning, we have to to find a balance between micromanaging learners’ digital experiences and letting them navigate a digital world without any guidance.
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How to make ISTE 2016 a learning adventure
ISTE 2016 is almost here! We’re super excited to meet with teachers from around the world next week in Denver, but we also know that ISTE can be a little overwhelming. So, here are our tips and tricks for making ISTE an awesome learning adventure.
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Who are the Hapara Certified Educators?
One year ago, the Hapara Certified Educator program began as a humble attempt to unify a small group of like-minded educators and make it easier to share best Hapara practices.
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Using technology to rethink summer learning
Summer is a time for learners (and teachers!) to relax and reset. It’s important to keep kids learning, but summer assignments have to be highly engaging to have any real impact.
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Congrats, Hapara Certified Educator graduates!
Congratulations to Cohort 3 graduates!
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District offers secure exams with Hapara and G Suite
What if you want your secure examinations to be learning experiences and opportunities for learners to express their creativity, and to demonstrate a wide spectrum of their understanding and capabilities? Add the challenge of using Google Apps, and web content. Then what?
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Hapara student voice podcast
Hapara Certified Educators Jennifer Struebing and Lisa Harrison spoke with Larry Jacobs of Education Talk Radio to share how they use digital tools to raise student voice in their respective schools.
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Hapara Workspace as professional learning hub
Workspace has commanded the attention of our global community of education innovators. Within two weeks of the release of Workspace in August, individual Workspaces had aggregated more than one million views.
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Catch learners in the act with Hapara
Educators Cat Tompkins and Tammy Howerton offer five ideas for using Hapara Highlights in this blog post from their desks in Chesterfield County Public Schools, Virginia.
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Three ways to magnify student voice in the digital classroom with Hapara
For some, the phrase student voice invokes images of endless student government meetings where the debate about school lunch ends up right where it started. For others, a strong and healthy culture of student voice is the key to motivating students to work hard, be creative, and take care of each other.
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Student agency Hapara Certified Educator podcast
Two Hapara Certified Educators, +Aida Awad, and +Evyan Wagner, share their thoughts on student agency with Larry Jacobs on Education Talk Radio.
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Learn by doing, not by PowerPointing
Are the days of point-and-click Professional Development over?
On Monday, the Hapara Workspace team released an exciting new feature that allows teachers to add other teachers, staff, and admins as learners to Workspace. Now, professional developers and instructional coaches can use Hapara to accelerate the learning of staff and teachers in professional development contexts. It also gives educators new collaborative options for PLCs and PLNs.
Hapara Certified Educator Spotlight: Aida Awad, Park Ridge, Illinois, USA
The Hapara Certified Educator (HCE) program is designed to help edtech integrators, professional developers, instructional coaches, and teacher-innovators adopt best practices in leveraging Hapara Instructional Management.
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Hapara is EdtechDigest Cool Tool finalist
Hapara’s Instructional Management solution for digital learning with Google Apps was chosen as a finalist for EdtechDigest’s Cool Tool Award.
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Hapara Certified Educator Spotlight: Anthony Speranza, Melbourne, Australia
The Hapara Certified Educator (HCE) program is designed to help edtech integrators, professional developers, instructional coaches, and teacher-innovators adopt best practices in leveraging Hapara Instructional Management.
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Hapara plays nicely with your LMS
Learning Management Systems (LMS) are growing in popularity in primary and secondary education settings. At Hapara, we are getting more requests from schools that use LMS’s like Schoology, Edmodo, and Canvas to make it easier for Hapara’s Instructional Management System (IMS) to seamlessly integrate with these LMS’s.
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Crossing the chasm of GAFE adoption
WRITTEN BY Allison Winston In their first and second year using Google Apps for Education (GAFE), many organizations evaluate the success of their implementation based on teacher adoption rather than the impact that adoption is having on...
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Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
Why reinvent the wheel when you can borrow from the experts? Check out this curated collection of Hapara Workspaces were designed and shared publically by Hapara-using educators from around the world.
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Workspace of the week winners! Jan. 29, 2016
Hapara Certified Educator Jennifer Streubing designed a three-part poetry unit for her 10th grade English class at Maine West High School in Illinois, USA. Check out the awesome performance poetry videos and the ways Jennifer has encouraged learners to take more ownership by having them teach each other.
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Hapara Workspace sharing competition: Workspace of the week
Using the new Public Sharing feature in Hapara Workspace, teachers can elect to share the Workspaces they have created with friends, colleagues, and educators around the world. Hapara-using recipients can then copy the shared Workspace into their own Hapara instance, and customize or modify as needed.
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Teachers share all – Hapara Workspace
Teachers share lesson plans. They also share resources. And in a number of platforms, they will share guides on how best to put a lesson into practice. Now, all of that is wrapped into one package with shareable Workspaces from Hapara.
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Microteaching improves student achievement
Canadian researcher, Michael Fullan, recently visited the schools where Hapara was founded. Here is a video about what he learned about student achievement with microteaching.
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iNACOL Blended Learning Award – and the winner is…
The Manaiakalani Cluster has received numerous awards in the past, but the INACOL blended learning award marks the first time that the cluster received such significant international recognition.
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Video: Learner Agency and PBL at HPSS
The Manaiakalani Cluster has received numerous awards in the past, but the INACOL blended learning award marks the first time that the cluster received such significant international recognition.
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Hapara’s sticky new edtech workspace crests one million views in two weeks
We designed Workspace with the same force factors that drove us to build our Dashboard for Google Apps in 2010 and our Highlights (previously Interact) for Chrome tool in 2012; to meet the needs of teachers and learners pushing edtech to its max in support of differentiation, personalization, and collaboration.
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New Hapara Certified Educators program graduates first class
This Spring, a group of educators from the U.S. and Australia accepted the challenge of joining the inaugural Hapara Certified Educator (HCE) program cohort.
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What we hear from the Hapara Certified Educators: Monitor or empower?
The Hapara Certified Educator program is a certification designed to help edtech integrators, professional developers, instructional coaches, and teacher-innovators utilize a pedagogy-first approache to integrating Hapara tools.
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Hapara Workspace is on the way
The excitement is building. After months of alpha release, we’re pleased to announce our newest product Hapara Workspace, will be available to your teachers in just a few short weeks! To help you prepare, we’ve created a number of tools to help guide your teachers and learners.
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Introducing Hapara Workspace
Teachers use a lot of resources. Workspace organizes these into cards. Goal and Rubrics add the learning context. Selectively allow learners to create and edit. Activities with built-in workflow: Due dates, Auto-lockout, Submission, Return. Learners can collaborate in groups.
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Hapara releases new UI for Teacher Dashboard
Today, we introduce our new Teacher Dashboard user interface (UI) in Open Beta release. Over the past few months, we have been in a Closed Beta and greatly appreciate the time and effort Hapara community members have dedicated to bring you this new interface. We learned… a lot!
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Google groups, organization units and subdomains – explainer
Technology directors and facilitators new to the Google Suite game must master a new vernacular. When managing a Google Suite domain, three things you must quickly learn about are groups, organization units (OU’s), and subdomains. Each has a host of different applications, some overlapping, and can be used to assist a school system with data maintenance and customization.
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Google Sites as e-binders or portfolios
If you are already using Google Apps for Education and you are looking for a portfolio solution for your students, or even just a simple eBinder, look no further. The solution is right under your nose!
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The purpose of the e-portfolio
For my part, the real value of the ePortfolios is in the reflection and the learning. Making the connections between the ePortfolio and learning is paramount.
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Research: improved teaching practices, student engagement and learning outcomes
Hapara Dashboard was originally dreamed up by a group of educators at Pt England School in the Manaiakalani cluster in New Zealand. As they began their 1:1 journey with Google Apps, the teachers quickly realized that they needed something that would help them better manage learners working online and enable them to create deeper learning experiences.
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