Hapara

Hapara is a cool tool for teachers to use to see 'inside' their students' Google Drives, Gmail and Learning Journals. Sounds great but how does it all fit together?

Here's the video from Hapara themselves to explain what it does.

But how does it work for us at UWC? Watch this presentation to see how the different elements fit together. 

 There are a few components: 

1) Gmail - this is how many Junior school teachers will communicate with their students (sharing homework, resources, etc). Using Hapara teachers will be able to see all emails in their students' inboxes. 

2) Google Drive - This is the main place for students to save their work. Saving work here allows students to access their files from anywhere (as long as they have the same programme on their computer e.g. Pages or Numbers). If the file was created within the Google suite (Google document, Google spreadsheet, Google presentation, etc) then no external software is needed. Saving a file here is the same as saving to anywhere else on your computer (click Save then choose the Google Drive folder). By creating folders for each individual unit of work files will be kept organised and easy to locate.

3) Learning Journals - this year we are moving to a digital portfolio of student work. This can be a mixture of final pieces, the process and steps along the way to achieving the final piece, photographs, videos and self reflections to name just a few. You will find many ways of capturing student work in your classes. Remember that you have many tools at your disposal (iPod touches, iPads, iSight cameras in the MacBooks). Folders have already been created for the students in their Google Drive so please encourage your students to create individual unit folders inside the relevant one. 

How this all fits together is like this. Work gets saved in folders in Google Drive. The folder then gets inserted into the students' Learning Journal. Three times per year the Learning Journal will be opened up to parents so they can view the work. As more work is added to the folders it becomes visible on their Learning Journal automatically. 

Cheryl has created this video to show you how to create folders and insert them into her Learning Journal. 

Folders tutorial from Alison on Vimeo.

The main takeaway from this post is to capture the work being created in your classes and save it in the correct folder. We'll help you with the next step when you are ready.

Any questions? Feel free to speak with Ali or Sean.