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Back-to-school prep in the Northern Hemisphere is in full swing! To make this transition smoother for your school technology team, we’re rolling out several exciting updates to Hāpara. These updates are designed to improve usability and give administrators and teachers more choices, all while saving time. Let’s break down this Hāpara product update and how it can help your school or district thrive in the upcoming school year.
We’re excited to announce that we will soon have integration with OneRoster, which is designed to simplify roster syncing. As OneRoster explains, it allows you to “securely and reliably exchange roster information” between different platforms. We will support One Roster 1.1. and integration via REST API. If your SIS supports this, we should be able to facilitate direct integration.
Using the OneRoster standard, you can manage class, teacher and student information and sync it with Hāpara.
We’re introducing several impactful updates to Hāpara Highlights, our tool that helps teachers monitor and manage student online activity. These changes are designed to streamline workflows and make classroom management more intuitive.
Say goodbye to extra clicks! In Hāpara Highlights, teachers will now land directly on the Class View page, providing streamlined visibility into their students’ activities. From this page, they can toggle between Browser Tabs and Current Screens.
New “Close tab instantly” icon
Located next to students’ open tabs, the lightning bolt icon allows teachers to close a student’s tab immediately with one click. This means they will see no additional windows or reasons to select.
When a teacher closes a student’s tab instantly, the student will see an automated message alerting them that their teacher closed their tab.
X icon for closing with reasons
Teachers still have the option to close tabs with reasons through the X icon next to students’ open tabs. This feature is enabled by default, but administrators can disable it through the Hāpara Admin Console for schools that prefer a simpler approach. Your team can also customize these reasons.
We’ve eliminated unnecessary countdowns in tools like Pause Tabs and Freeze Tabs, allowing for faster classroom management.
However, we’ve kept a five-second warning in place for Focus Sessions, ensuring students and teachers have a moment to prepare before a session begins.
Teachers can now see how long a Guide Browsing session has been running with a handy timer in the Class View session bar at the top of the page. This change helps educators better manage their time during lessons.
We’ve also moved the session buttons to the right side of the bar, reducing cognitive load for a cleaner interface. Also, when a session is active, the bar will now appear yellow for added clarity.
Because of highly requested feedback, we’re working on an improvement to Guide Browsing Focus Sessions. This update will allow teachers the option to open all URLs onto students’ screens automatically or send students a list of allowed URLs instead. We’ll let you know once this feature update is available.
The ability to view students’ browsing history is on its way, offering even more transparency and insight into online behavior. Stay tuned for updates and the chance to offer early feedback!
We’ve also made updates in the Hāpara Admin Console to give administrators greater flexibility. You can enable or customize the following features directly from the console in the Settings tab.
Customize reasons for closing tabs
When a teacher clicks the X in our screen monitoring tool to close a student’s tab, they’re asked to select a reason. This reason will appear on the student’s screen.
Your school or district team can customize the default reasons or add your own reasons based on learning needs or school philosophy. We recommend doing this to give students clear digital citizenship feedback so they begin to make better choices in the future.
If your school or district prefers not to include the “reasons for closing tabs” feature, you can disable it in the Hāpara Admin Console.
Teachers also have the ability to close tabs instantly by clicking the lightning bolt icon in our screen monitoring tool. This feature does not need to be enabled in your admin console and will be available to teachers by default.
Hāpara Highlights Chat
Enable Hāpara Highlights Chat, our two-way teacher and student communication feature for personalized learning support.
When you enable this feature, teachers can send students direct messages without needing to call them out in front of the class.
Additionally, some students are reluctant to ask questions in front of the class, but when Chat is enabled and the teacher turns this feature on during class, the student can type a question to their teacher and get one-on-one support.
Here’s a quick reminder of some updates we’ve previously unveiled to enhance teaching and learning.
We are proud to partner with Gaggle, a 20-year veteran in student safety. Their dedication to students and providing phenomenal products and service aligns with our own values at Hāpara.
Together we offer schools an all-in-one solution for student safety and engagement. Combine our classroom management tools with Gaggle Web Filter, a dynamic real-time filter that uses AI and machine learning.
Gaggle Web Filter also integrates seamlessly with our classroom monitoring tool Hāpara Highlights. This integration “ is designed to give teachers more control in their digital classroom while reducing the burden on tech administrators. When a learner wants to use a website that is blocked by the filter, they can send a request to their teacher for it to be unblocked during class.”
For those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, we additionally offer Gaggle Safety Management. This tool sends your team alerts so your school can proactively support students’ wellbeing.
For our Spanish-speaking users, the Hāpara user interface is now translated to Spanish to ensure accessibility for all educators and students. If a device is set to Spanish, the translated version of Hāpara will appear to the administrator, teacher or student.
The Hāpara Highlights screen monitoring tool is available for Microsoft 365 schools and teachers and students who use the Edge browser, giving districts even more browser flexibility.
As mentioned, Hāpara Highlights Chat is now available for schools and districts to enable in the Hāpara Admin Console. This two-way messaging feature allows teachers to provide personalized learning support by redirecting students, giving formative feedback, checking in with students and clarifying instructions.
Teachers can also turn this feature on and off to make Chat available during class when it works best for them. When a teacher does turn Chat on, students can message their teacher with questions and directly ask for help.
We’re committed to continuously improving Hāpara so educators and students have the tools they need to succeed. These updates aren’t just about adding features. They’re about making your team’s experience using our tools more meaningful.
What are you most excited about? We’d love to hear your thoughts!
