Classroom Management 

In Our Current Digital World:

Hapara

@LisaBerghoff

It has been so exciting to see how our classrooms are evolving. The integration of technology, while incredibly powerful for learning, also brings its own set of challenges when it comes to managing classrooms of teenagers. With our new No Cell Bell To Bell policy, one would think that our students are now completely available to attend and engage in class. As with most things in education, the situation is much more complex. It is hard to believe that eleven years ago was the first time every student in our school had their own chromebook. Since that time, the technology has advanced and so have our students. With that, we too must adapt our own classroom management strategies.

This is where tools like Hapara come into play, and I want to emphasize that our approach to using it should not be about being the "digital police". It's not about punishment, or catching kids in the act of doing something wrong. Instead, it's about fostering a learning environment where students are empowered to make good choices, and where educators have the tools to guide them effectively. I often find myself repeating in my head: Their frontal lobes are not fully formed!

Effective classroom management, digital or otherwise, is fundamentally about building relationships and having conversations. Let's help our students understand why certain behaviors are disruptive to their learning and the learning of others, rather than just imposing consequences. 

Here's how you can use Hapara to help shift that paradigm:

What Is Hapara?

Hapara is a classroom management system software that is designed for K-12 schools. Among other things, it gives teachers a real-time view of student browsing activities, allowing them to redirect off-task students and give immediate feedback. Teachers also have the option to create "guided browsing" sessions, where student devices will only be allowed to access specific sites for a specified amount of time.

How Do I Use Hapara?

You can find the link to your Hapara dashboard in the staff portal listed under "Classroom". You will be prompted to log in using your school Google account. When you first open Hapara, you will see all of your classes. Click on a class to get started. 

When you click on a class you are taken to the Dashboard. Click on Highlights to get to the Class View page. 

From Class View, you can see your students' current browser tabs. From here, you can do many things. This is where it is so important to communicate and have conversations with students. Remember, this is a tool that can be used to help teach our students healthy habits. 

Here are some of the capabilities for helping individual students: 

• Send announcement: Click on the megaphone icon to send an announcement. This will appear on the student's screen. This can be a wonderful way of communicating without shaming. You can also use this feature to send words of encouragement.
  
  
  

• Close a tab. You can change the view so that you can see all open browser tabs for students. When you click the X on a student's tile, you are given several options. See the screenshot below. I like to say to students- If you're having a hard time staying on task, I'm happy to help you by closing some of your tabs for you. Do you want help or do you want to do it yourself?

Here is what that view looks like. See that little lightening bolt? That will immediately close a tab. 

Here are your options when you click the X: 

• You also have more options for helping individual students.  Click the three horizontal dots in the right corner of the student tile. Take a look:

Planning a class activity where you suspect distraction may be a factor? You can set things up for an entire class in Hapara. These controls can be found in the upper right corner of your screen. 

These are pretty self-explanatory, and hovering your mouse will provide you with more information. 

• Freeze the students' current tabs
• Pause everyone's screens
• Share out links
• Send a class announcement
• Guide browsing

Guided browsing is one that you should know about. This allows students to only access certain sites OR blocks access to certain sites, for a specified period of time. You can schedule these in advance so you're not setting it up while your students are looking at you. 

These are called Focus sessions and Filter sessions. If you are going to do this multiple times, I suggest creating a template so you can just reuse it instead of recreating it each time. 

When you click create, you can enter the information and then click Schedule or Start. Please be mindful when you enter the duration! If class is ending and you set it for longer than you need then your students will be locked out for their next class. Please don't do that.

 

A focus session allows for 10 links and a filter session allows for 50. You will also notice that you can enable this for the whole class, a group, or individual students. 

Our current digital age demands a new approach to classroom management. It is no longer effective, nor is it educational, to just play "gotcha". I would also argue that the adults will always lose this game. With tools like Hapara, we have an opportunity to be more proactive, supportive, and conversational. This is about opening a dialogue, building trust, and ultimately, helping our students understand that doing the right thing online isn't about avoiding punishment, it's about maximizing their own learning and being someone who contributes positively to our shared learning community.

Want some help getting started with Hapara? Need to practice what you will say to your students? Reach out! I'm always happy to help.