My Absolutely Brilliant class have been working on close to 200 google documents already this term. Without Hapara I can only imagine the nightmare of requiring each student to share these with me, the never ending task of duplicating and sharing documents to send out to students and the ongoing battle with physically visiting individual blogs to check for updates and comments.Hapara Google Dashboard makes my life (and therefore my students life) so much easier. Inspired by a bunch of digitally minded NZ teachers. Hapara is hands down the one piece of software that makes this BYOD class tick over smoothly from day to day. Hapara is my portal to everything going on within each students google account. On one screen I can check when all students have last made a blog post and view it with one click. I can see who has commented on their posts, when they commented and what they said. I can see if they have any unread emails and if need be (have never needed to yet) can view the emails they are sending and receiving.
This is all great and super handy! However the best and most valuable aspect of Hapara is the interaction with google docs. My students use docs to draft all their writing. Gone are the days of taking stacks of books home, trying to write a meaningful comment with both positive feedback and next steps, not to mention that feeling when you realise you've just counted 6 times how many books you have left and its still more than you've done. With Hapara I can see on 1 screen the documents in a students drive, click to open, highlight to comment and away I go. Students are receiving far more feedback in general because of the speed and they can see easily where exactly I am referring to. They can reply to ask for clarification and can resolve the comment to show they have actioned any further steps. This leaves valuable classroom time for working alongside students and home time for rejuvenating and planning more exciting lessons. I remember the piles I used to make - needs help, needs to do more, going well, finished etc. Hapara even allows you to group by colour each student which is proving valuable to link students that could benefit from working together or remind me who to catch up with the next day.No Hapara don't pay me to say all of this, but there's an idea and I do believe they are hiring at the moment. Couldn't do it without ya Hapara!
