Hāpara partners with the Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium to offer Student Dashboard Digital Backpack free in Alberta

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hāpara partners with the Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium to offer Student Dashboard Digital Backpack free in Alberta

Chicago, Illinois, Jan. 24, 2022–The Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium (ERLC) announced Monday that it will support pilots of Hāpara’s Student Dashboard Digital Backpack for all K-12 schools in the province of Alberta until the end of August 2022. This partnership will aid school divisions across Alberta in providing high quality digital learning experiences to learners no matter where they reside or how they attend school (in-person, hybrid or remote). 

Hāpara’s Student Dashboard Digital Backpack provides students with everything they need for learning in one digital hub. It takes away the need to navigate to various websites and apps and search their Google Drive for important academic documents, and puts everything in one single dashboard. This reduces stress for learners and their parents and provides continuity when dealing with remote learning and quarantine situations. Additionally, the platform provides seamless management and distribution of open educational resources (OER), licensed content and materials created by school divisions. This will reduce costs for school divisions and allow them to regularly update curriculum with little to no additional cost. 

“Hāpara is honored to partner with ERLC to offer a solution to teachers, students and parents that helps to lessen interruptions to teaching and learning due to the pandemic. We are confident that it will be a cost-saving measure for schools, while providing learners with the most current and relevant curriculum in an easy-to-use digital dashboard. Furthermore, we see this as a way to lessen the stress of remote learning on parents and caregivers so they can play a supporting role in their child’s education.” Wayne Poncia, CEO

A timely solution for Alberta’s students, parents and teachers

A key role of ERLC is to facilitate the effective implementation of curricula, including instruction, assessment, and student learning outcomes. In this role, ERLC brokers professional support resources and delivers professional development based on the evolving needs of educational stakeholders. 

For the past two years, ERLC has been working with a number of school jurisdictions in Alberta to create and distribute learning resources and efficient learning tools to teachers and students. These school jurisdictions have selected more than 560 digital learning resources amounting to the equivalent of tens of thousands of pages of Alberta aligned content. 

ERLC is committed to maintain the resources as “evergreen”…publishing new and revised resources according to new curriculum standards in partnership/collaboration with all participating school jurisdictions.

Students have a single productivity dashboard that gives students (and their guardians/caregivers/parents) one click digital access to all assignments from their teachers as well as assigned resources. 

About ERLC

The Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium (ERLC) is one of seven regional consortia in Alberta established to support regional professional development needs for all those who influence student learning. We work with schools, school authorities and our partner organizations to create professional development opportunities in an ongoing, coordinated and cost-effective manner.

About Hāpara  

Hāpara began in New Zealand in the Manaiakalani school cluster in 2011 and now has offices in Canada, United States and New Zealand. Our team is dedicated to building great products for schools.

After adopting Google Apps for Education in 2010, Manaiakalani educators realized they needed a more effective way of managing learner work in this new digital environment. They collaborated to design a dream tool that would streamline teacher workflow and deepen personalized learning and student engagement. They emphasized a straightforward design that would empower teachers of all technical abilities to track learner progress, provide ongoing feedback, disseminate files, and facilitate collaboration and differentiation through flexible groupings. From this, Hāpara’s original Teacher Dashboard was born.

Today, Hāpara has a range of products that were all built to support educators as they create authentic, personalized learning experiences. 

Notes to Editors: 

Student Dashboard Digital Backpack – A one-stop hub for learners to organize themselves for learning. Student Dashboard Digital Backpack provides access to all of their Google Classroom assignments and announcements, Drive files, Gmail from teachers and even gives them reminders when something is due (or late!)–all in one place. Teachers can easily find district approved digital textbooks, novels and more and assign them to students. These digital resources can be accessed from anywhere on any device, so students have exactly what they need, no matter where learning takes place.