My Take
Hāpara is must-have software for any school that is invested in the Google Workspace for Education. The Hāpara Suite offers seamless integration with student Chromebooks and student Google Drives and also has a fantastic Workspace platform for facilitating engaging digital learning experiences for students. While technology itself will not improve student learning, a teacher using technology can facilitate awesome learning experiences for students, and Hāpara is one the best tools a teacher can use to help facilitate best practices. While Workspace is a bit more challenging to learn, the Highlights and Teacher Dashboard features are relatively intuitive for teachers to learn and implement.
How I Use It
Hāpara was especially great for being able to facilitate formative feedback loops until students achieved mastery. It made it super easy to see all student files with one view and be able to hop in and hop back out after providing feedback. I also really liked the way the groups feature was set up! It helped me to discretely differentiate learning experiences to make sure that all my students were learning. Finally, the Activity Viewer in Highlights helped me feel like I had a pulse on what my students were browsing on the web without leaving me feeling like I had to be glued to my screen to keep track. Being transparent with students about the visibility I had into their digital activity helped me be proactive and curbed a lot of unwanted digital behavior before it even happened.