Listen to an audio version of this post:
Alberta, CA
LOCATION
2014
USER SINCE
4,000
# OF LEARNERS
K-12
GRADE LEVEL
1,000,000
# OF LEARNERS IMPACTED GLOBALLY
About Buffalo Trail Public Schools
Buffalo Trail Public Schools has approximately 4,000 students from kindergarten to grade 12 who attend 28 schools. The division covers approximately 14,250 square kilometers in east-central Alberta, Canada and employs approximately 525 full and part-time teachers and support staff.
“Through the use of Hāpara, I support innovative instructional practices to meet the diverse needs of our learners in our division.”
Heather Rentz, Innovation Coach
Sharing is caring: Workspaces for any learner, worldwide
In 2020, leaders at BTPS needed a way to build a sustainable solution for digital curriculum. They already had a seamless and cost-effective way of delivering instruction with Workspace for Google, in-person and remotely. What they lacked was an economical way to provide learners with an exceptional digital curriculum. They knew that BTPS teachers and Hāpara teachers all over the world were building amazing lessons, projects and activities in Workspace–but not everyone was sharing. In the spring of 2020, Hāpara and BTPS launched the Sharing is caring initiative and encouraged teachers to share their Workspaces for Google publicly. Teachers enthusiastically participated and started making their Workspaces public. There are now 30,000 publicly shared Workspaces for Google, and counting. Thousands of hours of instruction have been shared globally, impacting more than 1,000,000 learners.
And it all started in a small school division in Alberta, Canada educating 4,000 students. Their work impacts 1,000,000 learners worldwide.
The ambitious group of educators at BTPS partnered with Hāpara to take things a step further to create publicly shared Workspaces for every course in the entire Alberta curriculum. Hāpara then aligned these courses to other curriculums as well (i.e. CCSS, Ontario, New Zealand, Australia, New York, Nebraska and more). The result is a repository of curriculum that can be used worldwide and a way to deliver it digitally via Workspaces created for use with Google.
Teachers powering awesome learning
Teachers in BTPS are powering awesome learning with Workspace. They are creating more curriculum-aligned Workspaces every day, sharing Workspaces and collaborating with co-teachers and differentiating in a few simple clicks to focus on student-centered learning.
Buffalo Trail Public Schools + Hāpara = optimal learning
Educators in Buffalo Trail Public Schools are passionate about delivering a high-quality digital learning experience to every student in their division by putting learners first and prioritizing their social and emotional needs. In 2014, BTPS adopted Hāpara after researching the achievement results of schools in New Zealand. “We saw Hāpara as an opportunity to revolutionize teaching and learning in an ever-changing, technology rich environment. Evidence of optimal learning environments have begun to emerge across our division, where student-centered classrooms leveraged the power of Hāpara for our students’ learning.” says Heather Rentz, Innovation Coach.
“Maximizing learning opportunities for children in our communities is my passion and I look forward to opportunities to collaborate with teachers across BTPS to create optimal learning opportunities for all learners.”
Katrin Heim, Innovation Coach