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Nicole Bixler
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Customer Details
Customer since: 2024
Location: Holdrege, Nebraska
Number of students: ~1,000
Number of schools: 4 (Holdrege Elementary School, Holdrege Middle School, Holdrege High School, Holdrege Public School Early Childhood Education Center)
Tools they leverage: Hāpara Classroom Management
Featuring: James Reed (Technology Integration Specialist), Pat Hellriegel (Media Specialist, Middle and High School), Brea Martin (8th Grade Math teacher)
A small team supporting four schools
Holdrege Public Schools serves 1,000 learners in Pre-K through 12th grade. Technology Integration Specialist James Reed and Technology Coordinator Darren Hanson oversee the district’s technology program. Media Specialist Pat Hellriegel supports Reed and Hanson in implementing technology, in addition to her work in the school libraries and assessment coordination.
Because their team is small, they have limited time to roll out and support new tools. That means any tool they adopt for teachers and learners has to be intentional and truly make a difference in teaching and learning.
They evaluate a tool in two ways:
- Do teachers at a school want it?
- Will it benefit a majority of learners?
Reed takes feedback from teachers into account before the district decides to bring a new tool into classrooms. He asks a few teachers across the schools to test out a tool first.
“If I think it’s a good tool, then I get their feedback. And if they think it’s a good tool, then it probably is a good tool because they’ll put it to use. If I get a push from the teachers, then the administrators have always said yes if the teachers want it,” Reed explains.
Adopting Hāpara after trying two other solutions
The district previously used two other classroom management solutions before Hāpara. The first solution they adopted didn’t work consistently. Sometimes, students wouldn’t show up on the platform, and teachers couldn’t see their online activity, which meant they could not monitor what they were doing on their school devices.
The district moved on to a second monitoring solution, but the company later raised the price far and above what the district could manage.
That’s when Reed started looking into Hāpara, a classroom management solution that is user-friendly, affordable and reliable. Reed’s interactions with the supportive and friendly customer team reinforced his decision to transition to Hāpara.
Holdrege Middle School was the first school in the district to embrace Hāpara, where it helped them keep digital learning on track. The high school then realized they needed Hāpara, too, because they were having issues with learners opening tabs during assessments to search for answers. Teachers there said, “Can we start using that tool you have at the middle school?”
Now that the high school uses Hāpara, teachers can restrict learners from opening tabs during an assessment, keeping exams secure.
Keeping devices while other districts pull them
While some districts in the U.S. are removing devices from classrooms because of screen time backlash, Holdrege is keeping student devices.
Reed believes the district should teach learners how to use technology well rather than take it away from them. Otherwise, kids are left to navigate the online world on their own without a chance to develop essential digital citizenship skills.
Hāpara helps ensure that screen time at Holdrege is instructionally meaningful. It gives learners the guardrails they need online, and provides teachers with evidence to show that screen time is dedicated to learning.
Focusing learners while freeing up the teacher’s time
Brea Martin, an 8th grade math teacher, uses Guided Browsing in Hāpara to focus learners’ online browsing to appropriate websites for class.
Martin says that staying away from digital distractions is difficult even for adults. She says, “To ask a 13-year-old to do something that a lot of adults struggle with, I think sometimes as adults we forget that they are just 13.”
For the learners who get distracted easily and need closer supervision, she uses Hāpara to lock their browsing to the approved websites for the lesson. This frees up her time to help learners around the classroom. “That really does help,” she emphasizes.
Across Holdrege, Hāpara provides the structure learners need to succeed as they develop their executive functioning and digital citizenship skills.
Reaching learners who won’t raise their hand
Reed points out that teachers in the district use Hāpara for more than guiding learners’ browsing. The Chat feature helps learners who need help, particularly the ones who are reluctant to speak up in class.
He explains, “A student may not want to raise their hand and ask a question, but can send the teacher a message and get real-time feedback instead of waiting for an email response … The message pops right up.”
Personalizing browsing for every learner
Hellriegel uses another feature that is unique to Hāpara. She monitors learners who have in-school suspension, or ISS. To help them stay on track with their classwork, she uses Hāpara’s dynamic student grouping feature.
Using Groups, she adds them to specific browsing sessions based on their needs. The principals and the guidance counselor can access the learners’ online activity as well, so everyone who is responsible for supporting learners during ISS can monitor their activity.
Hellriegel also created a set of browsing templates for different situations. For example, she has a “Super ISS” template that keeps learners off of certain sites and also a template that blocks emails. “I have four templates that I use,” she says, applying the template that works best for the learner she has that day.
She can also flexibly adjust a learner’s browsing access. For example, when one learner in ISS needed to use a site outside of his approved list, she opened it for him, monitored his work and closed it again when he finished. “He did so well with that!”
Overall, Hellriegel says that Hāpara makes device time more effective for the learners she supports. “I would say they’re definitely more on task.”
Adopting a solution that teachers love
That combination of reliability, affordability and a supportive customer team is what sets Hāpara apart from the two solutions Holdrege tried previously.
Reed says, “Hāpara’s been the best product that we’ve used here at Holdrege. The teachers love it.”
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The post “The best product we’ve used”: Why Holdrege Public Schools switched to Hāpara appeared first on Hāpara.