Highlights

Highlights allow educators to have visibility into how students are using technology during your class. Not only will this aid as a classroom management tool while using technology, but it will give you many opportunities to incorporate lessons on digital citizenship as well!

While there is some shared functionality with core dashboard functionalities (such as having access to files within a student's drive), Hapara adds tools to show you how students are use the internet during classroom instruction as well as reveal how they collaborate and work with others digitally.

We highly encourage all educators to use Hapara Highlights responsibly and respectfully as it pertains to guiding student learning in a digital environment. Please refer to the following documents to help you be the most effective Hapara Educator that you can be:

• Teaching Digital Citizenship

• How to Positively Engage with Learners Working Online

• Evolution of Monitoring Infographic

• Evolution of Monitoring E-Book

There are four elements to Highlights:

• Activity Viewer: Provides an overview of how information on the internet is being utilized in the class and how people are connecting/collaborating. It provides analytics about different forms of browser usage including a list of sites currently open, collaboration that is occurring and any unique activity. Results are divided between current and previous usage and should only be viewed during your classroom session.

• Browser Tabs: Similar to the ability to share out files with SmartShare, Browser Tabs allows you to send out specific websites for focused browsing. There are quite a few options associated with this, including the ability to restrict students browsing to within a specific site, as well as set a time limit for working on a specific task. Some possibilities associated with this include: brainstorming around a particular provocation, guide groups or individual students to a specific video or task, provide a set amount of time for students to complete a test using their computer and avoid confusing URLs by directing students to a specific website. Another functionality associated with Browser Tabs is the ability to send messages to students. Although you could do this via email within Dashboard, sending a message within Highlights means that it comes up directly on the screen.

• Current Screens: This provides a view into every browser screen in the classroom. Unlike applications such as Lanschool or GoGuardian, the insight provided is not live, rather it is a screenshot refreshed every 5-10 seconds. It also only does this when you have the Current Screens function open. This process can create quite a demand on the bandwidth used.

• Snaps: Whereas the screenshots shown via Current Screens are continually refreshed, Snap allows you to take a snapshot of student work when you see something interesting. Maybe it is something that you want to document or something to come back to at a later point. These are different from usual screenshots as they provide a range of additional information. This data includes student, subject, timeline of tab activity, who took the snap and when. These captured images can be saved by emailing to yourself or used as a means of sending feedback to students. They are automatically deleted from the system after six days.