Welcome to Hapara 101

In this and following articles, you can learn the basics of how Hapara works and get ideas for how to utilize this tool in your classroom. Hapara can assist with many Google services, help you manage your classroom or student chromebooks, and provide insight into how your students are communicating and using technology. This introduction section will cover the following topics:

  • Why we use Hapara
  • How to access Hapara
  • How to manage classes in Hapara
  • What Hapara does when a new class is created and how to create Hapara classes
  • What Hapara does when a student is added to a class and how to add new students to your classes
  • What students and teachers see in their google drives when Hapara is setup

Parts 2-6 will cover the Hapara interface in more detail and will go into Dashboard, Sharing, Class Info, Highlights, and Workspaces.

Overview

Why use Hapara?

Hapara is used to extend the functionality of Google service to work better for teachers and learners. Google services, for example Google Drive, Sites and Blogger, are first and foremost productivity tools. They are targeted at small to medium sized businesses and adults with some computer literacy. They do not "understand" the idea of teacher and student roles or that students belong to groups called classes. They are not targeted at students with a varying degree of ability with computers and web tools. Hapara acts as an interface to Google services that allows teachers to perform tasks with single students, groups, or whole classes. Hapara also acts as an intermediary that can reach into student Google Drives to give the teacher additional capabilities when required.

What problems does Hapara solve?

  • Making Google Drive more manageable for the classroom
  • Help learners share files appropriately and allow teachers to keep tabs on that sharing
  • Allows teachers to work with groups of students to assist in differential learning
  • Hapara Highlights helps keep students focused on appropriate work
  • Allow teachers to get a quick break down on what their class is currently working

How do I access Hapara?

You can access the Hapara Dashboard and your classes at: http://www.teacherdashboard.com

Google Account

Hapara uses your Google login. Make sure that you are not logged into a personal google account or the teacher dashboard will not allow you access to your classes.

How do I manage my classes in Hapara?

The first page you will see after logging in is the Manage Classes page. 

Teacher view of manage classes page

From here you can:

  • Hide course you do not want to see for the moment.
  • Group courses together for easier access.
  • Provide a nickname for your courses that might be more useful than the stock name.

How do I hide a course that I do not need at the moment?

By clicking the blue star icon next to the course you want to hide you can tell Hapara to hide this course from the My Classes page. Don't worry if you accidentally do this, you can see all courses, starred or not, in the All Classes section.

Can I group courses together?

Yes! Click the small pencil icon  in the upper-right corner of the course box and Hapara will give you a range of color options to group your courses. 

Course Groups

Use the color group option to group classes with the same subject or to distinguish between advisory classes and regular classes. You could even use colors to call out A day versus B day sections.

Can I change the name of a class?

Sort of. While the official class name cannot be changed and needs to be unique you can create a nickname for your course. These nicknames can be helpful for you but will not affect what Hapara names folders for example or how other teachers see your classes.

Classes in Hapara

What happens when a course is added to Hapara?

When a course is added, Hapara provides a number of resources:

  • A Class Folder
  • A Class Google Group
  • A Class Calendar
  • A Class entry on your Teacher Dashboard

What do class folders look like?

Teacher view of class folders in Google Drive.

Hapara will initially add your class folders to your Google Drive in the Shared with me section. If you create workspaces, they will each get a folder here as well.

Add Hapara Folders to your Drive

It is recommended that you right-click your class folders and choose Add to My Drive- at least for your currently in-session classes. This will make them available in the main portion of your Google Drive along with your other folders and content.

What can I do with my class google group?

Teacher Gmail view of class google group

Hapara creates a google group for each of your classes and automatically makes sure that your students are added to the group. This means you no longer have to curate your own list of student emails or add them individually to each email. Just start typing your class name and gmail will popup your course groups.

Google groups are powerful

Google groups are powerful and can be used for more than just emails. You can use them from Google Drive or Sites to share with your whole class easily. You can even create an archive of messages sent to your students. Contact the tech department for assistance if you'd like to try this.

How do students experience class calendars?

Student's are automatically subscribed to your class calendars. They do not need to accept invites for events or calendars. All Hapara calendars will show up in the student's Other Calendars section of their Google Calendar interface.

Student Google Calendar View 

How can I add a course to Hapara?

Generally Powerschool should be adding your courses automatically. However, if you are in a situation where you cannot have a course in Powerschool you may be able to create a Google Classroom course which can be integrated into Hapara. Please contact the tech department for assistance if you'd like to try this.

Students in Hapara

What happens when a student is added to a class in Hapara?

When a new student is added to a class in Powerschool and synced into Hapara the following things occur:

  • Hapara creates a new student folder for each of their classes.
  • Hapara adds the new student to each of their class google groups.
  • Hapara subscribes the student to each of their class calendars.
  • Hapara adds the student to each of their teacher's class dashboards.

What do student folders look like to the teacher?

Inside the class folder the teacher will see a sub-folder for each individual student in the class.

Student and Class Folders

Student's cannot see the class shared folder, instead they see only their own sub-folder.


What do student folders look like to the student?

Each student will see their class sub-folders, one for each class.

Can I add students to my Hapara Classes.

Generally students should be added automatically via powerschool. If a student is not showing up automatically and they seems to be correctly setup in powerschool please contact the tech department. We need to be sure that the student has been setup correctly before proceeding.  If you are in a situation where the student cannot be added to your class in powerschool then you may need to add the student via the add learner section in Class Info. More information is available on this in part 4 of this documentation.

Google Classroom

If you have worked with the tech department to setup a synced google classroom in Hapara then you need only add the student in google classroom and Hapara will sync that student into you Hapara class automatically.

Additional Resources