What can I do with Hāpara Highlights? Follow

In this article:

Set up guided practice

Check on students’ progress online

Communicate with students

Help students reflect on digital citizenship

Uses for Highlights

Hāpara Highlights allows teachers to create online lessons that are meaningful, purposeful and engaging, while guiding students so they get the most out of their time spent online. 

Overall, Highlights is designed to help you follow best practices for internet-based lessons. One of those best practices, and perhaps the most important one, is focusing on active learning. This means that students are actively engaged in learning rather than simply consuming information. 

Highlights helps you encourage active online learning in several ways.

Set up guided practice

Guide browsing is a Highlights feature that allows you to encourage active learning by setting up or scheduling guided browsing sessions with focused parameters.

You have two set-up options:

• Focus session — give students access to only a few websites that you specify
• Filter session — prevent students from accessing websites that you specify

Focusing or filtering browsing sessions give students practice with responsible online browsing. It also helps them stay on their learning path without outside distractions. Over time, you can give them more responsibility with their browsing to teach digital citizenship skills.  

You can also schedule these guided practice sessions for a later time or date, which make it easier to make substitute teacher plans.

Check on students’ progress online

Highlights also has several features that allow you to check in on how students are doing during an online lesson.

View browsing progress

The following features give you a bird’s eye view into how students are browsing the internet:

• Activity Viewer
• Browser Tabs
• Current Screens

You can easily see:

• Which websites students are visiting
• Whether students are staying on task in their online activity
• Screenshots of the websites they’re looking at

All three allow you to check on students’ progress online and have conversations with students about their progress. Whether you give students positive feedback or redirect them back onto a website for class, Highlights quickly gives you the insight you need.

You can also use the information in Activity Viewer, Browser Tabs and Current Screens to set up guided browsing sessions. Highlights is an excellent tool for guided practice with students because you can always see their screens and watch as they practice applying a concept for the first time.

View Google Drive assignments

The Drive button allows you to see students’ most recently modified Google Drive assignments. You can also search for any document in students’ Google Drives to view their progress.

Communicate with students

Additionally, in Highlights you can easily communicate with students about their online activity progress. Communication features include:

• Announcements to student, a group or the class. To do this, click the Announce button in the top right-hand corner of your screen
• From the Student Tile, send an announcement or email the student directly. 

You can be in constant contact with the student and put out fires when they happen. Instead of a student going weeks without understanding a concept, you could potentially reverse that misunderstanding in minutes.

Help students reflect on digital citizenship

Another way you can guide students in Highlights is with Snaps. This tool provides you and the student with concrete documentation of a student’s online activity. It gives you an image of what the student was viewing, as well as information about when it was taken.

During your conversation with a student about their online activity, the Snap can provide a reminder of their progress. This can help the student reflect on their digital citizenship skills, as well as allow you to reinforce the behaviors you want to see. 

Uses for Highlights

Highlights features	What do you do with this Highlights feature?	How do you use it?
Share links	Direct students to specific links online.	1. Click the Share links button at the top right-hand side of Highlights. 2. Then type your links and select your audience.
Snaps	Document students’ online work.	From the Activity Viewer: 1. To take a Snap, click the Activity View tab.  2. Hover over any student activity.  3. Then click the camera icon. From Current Screens: 1. Click a student screenshot in Current Screens.  2. Then click Take a snap at the bottom of the enlarged view of the screenshot.
Announce	Communicate with students and provide instant formative feedback while online.	Click the blue Announce button on the top right-hand side of Highlights.
Activity Viewer Browser Tabs Current Screens	Monitor student progress online, while focusing on digital citizenship.	Click Activity Viewer, Browser Tabs or Current Screens to view student browsing activity.
Guide browsing	Guide students’ browsing sessions by focusing them on specific websites or restricting certain websites.	1. Click Guide browsing. 2. Then select Set up a Focus session or Set up a Filter session.
Schedule	Schedule browsing sessions ahead of time.	1. Click Guide browsing and select the schedule option.  2. Or click on the Schedule tab and duplicate, edit or copy a session.
Drive button	View students’ recent Google Drive assignments or search for any document in their Google Drive.	1. Click the Drive button. 2. Preview a document by hovering over it in a Student Tile.  3. Click on the document name to open it. 4. Use the search bar to search for any document. 5. Click the Other options menu to search for documents by category.