Hāpara statement of ethical monitoring practice
The Hāpara Instructional Management Suite enables teachers to plan for and conduct learning experiences for students. In order to bring the benefits of web access and digital learning content to the classroom, Hāpara is designed to replicate existing teacher and student workflows. Educational best practices and routines need not be replaced by new workflows using technology. Rather, technology should enhance the teacher’s efficiency and the student’s learning performance.
Our commitment
Hāpara believes that technology should only be used for the purpose of teachers teaching and students learning.
In order to effectively educate their students, teachers need to manage the workflow of learning so that every learners has the opportunity to be successful. To effectively teach, teachers need to ‘know’ their students’ aptitudes, learning performance and learning activities during instruction. Visibility into student learning activities that could potentially be abused intentionally or unintentionally is of great concern to Hāpara.
Our promise
Hāpara does not, and never will, translate teacher or student online web browsing and behavior into digital data that can be used to make predictions about what they will do next.
Student privacy is very important to our team at Hāpara, and we do not share student data with third parties. We have conversations with educators throughout the world about how to teach students to protect their own data and privacy as well. We provide learning content to teachers to share with students, so that they can learn to protect their digital privacy. Furthermore, all student data is encrypted during transmission and in storage, and any student identifiable data is anonymized where appropriate.
Our practice
Hāpara ensures that the monitoring of student learning activities is focused solely on teaching and learning and is ethically managed:
- During instructional hours, Hāpara provides teachers with the ability to send learners website links and content, create website playlists for students to research and learn with and lockdown website access during examinations or when students are distracted and need to focus.
- When students are given web browsing opportunities, they are aware of their classroom teacher’s ability to monitor their website activity as the web browser extension on their device changes color. We are not aware of any other web monitoring tool for teachers that notifies the students during monitoring.
- Teachers can message students who are off task in their web browsing.
- Through the Hāpara setup, districts are instructed how to give or limit visibility so that an educator’s level of visibility is specific to their instructional role.
- Hāpara’s default settings only allow teachers to monitor web browsing while learners are on the school or district network.
- Hāpara regularly audits visibility settings to ensure districts and schools are only allowing teacher monitoring of student web browsing during instructional time.
- Hāpara provides robust training resources and programs that teach educators how to gradually release digital responsibility of web browsing. This approach allows students to make positive, learning-focused decisions while browsing the web.
Teaching and learning is our top priority, and we’re always here if you have questions or concerns. Please feel free to reach out to us at privacy@hapara.com.
