You really can take it with you! New in Haiku: Common Cartridge support. MiniSite uploads.

Sat, 30 January 2010 - 9:38 am by Renee Hochstetler

If you’ve been using the web a while, you’ve likely spent a ton of energy setting up your classroom website or online course, or if you’re in IT then supporting various systems. We hear and understand that you don’t want to redo all that good work, so now you can bring your work with you into Haiku LMS!

Newest Additions to Haiku LMS

  • cc_import_midCommon Cartridge Imports: If you’re already using an LMS then you know what it took to enter and organize all your curriculum data. Haiku LMS is Common Cartridge (IMS) compliant, and if your current LMS (e.g. Blackboard and Moodle) is, too, then you can bring your data along when you make the switch to Haiku.
    Watch the video tutorial
  • Mini Sites: If you’ve created lesson plans in third-party tools like Softchalk, you can use Haiku’s content blocks to upload their HTML files into your Haiku class! You can even upload small apps that span several files from your Computer Science classes, such as Java applets.
    Watch the video tutorial
  • Randomized Multiple Choice: Want to make sure students are really thinking about the question and the right answer and are not just multiple-guessing? When you create assessments, set multiple choice responses to randomize so that they’re in a different order each time a student sees them.

Thanks to our current Haiku LMS teachers and Twitter followers who provided input for these features! We’re confident they’ll be used well and are excited to see the creativity that they enable!

So much easier! School & district imports in Haiku LMS are better than ever.

Fri, 29 January 2010 - 10:39 am by Bryan Falcon

Last week Haiku launched an exciting new feature – exciting, that is – if you are a system administrator for a large school or district.

If you are one of our system administrators or considering bringing Haiku LMS into your district, read on!

Previously, Haiku supported “Differential Imports,” and the process, although simple to implement for our users, required the upload of a complete data set in order for Haiku to know what to update.

This meant that schools and districts had to upload every single class…every single user…every single roster entry (you get the idea) every time the system administrator did an import. This process worked well for small schools pulling information out of a single system, but as Haiku LMS’s user base grew, so did the size of the imports Haiku’s larger districts were uploading to Haiku LMS.

This need became particularly acute when one or two records needed to be changed out of hundreds of thousands of records.  You can see the need pretty clearly by now, I am sure.

Thus, our most recent release added a new tool for our school system administrators.

The new feature, named “Partial Imports,” enables schools and districts to upload only data that has changed.  Setting it up is simple – it looks almost exactly the same as the “Differential Imports” currently being used.  The key difference is that a separate file is used if the school or district wishes to delete or disable entries.

If you are a Haiku system administrator and are interested in knowing more about this new type of import, please contact Bryan Falcon at bryanf@haikulearning.com.

Special thanks to Saddleback Valley Unified School District (California) and Ocean Springs School District (Mississippi) for their support and feedback in bringing about this latest new enhancement!

Get it together! New in Haiku: Improved Roster & Additive Imports.

Sat, 16 January 2010 - 7:42 am by Renee Hochstetler

Lighten your load and free up more of your time. That’s right: our latest round of updates focuses on optimizing access, which translates to optimizing your time.

Focus on teaching your students. Give Haiku more to do.

  • Roster Improvements: Access student information where you’d expect to find it: in the Roster. That now includes their ePortfolios, too. Go ahead – take a look by watching the short video below.

Rest easy. Your data is safe.

The workload just reduced stress levels for your IT staff, too.

  • Additive Imports: Domain administrators have more options for user management when attaching to a student information system. No longer are you limited to differentiated imports.
  • Cloud Files: Keep your expectations high and your costs low. Don’t worry about whether Haiku LMS can handle your data – it’s hosted securely in the cloud so that we can scale to meet storage and traffic demands. Initially, we’re moving only a few schools to the cloud; others will soon follow, and we’ll be in touch.

Let us know what you think!

Innovative Gulf Coast district packs a punch with Haiku

Mon, 11 January 2010 - 2:57 pm by Renee Hochstetler

The Ocean Springs School District is located on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and is committed to excellence in education. The district leadership values and encourages a holistic and integrated approach to education, believing that public education should encompass the development of academics, arts, and athletics as a platform from which children can excel, whether through individual ability, personal desire, natural talent, or by choice.

ossd-logoIn terms of academic variety, the district’s offerings range from GED completion to International Baccalaureate. The high school even gets students out of the classroom and into the community in a district-designed community service course that is the first of its kind in the state of Mississippi.


Choosing an LMS: the triple threat of interface, price & features

At the 2009 National Education Computing Conference (NECC), now the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the district took advantage of the opportunity to evaluate many learning and content management systems. Ultimately, Haiku LMS provided the winning combination of an easy-to-use interface, reasonable price, and great features.

According to Jodi Harris, Director of Technology for the district, the response to Haiku LMS has been very positive. “Teachers love how easy it is to create pages and content. It is easily customized to all levels,” said Ms. Harris. By the end of the school year, all students in grades six through 12 will be using Haiku LMS.

NBC IDs the trend: K12 online learning is on the rise!

Mon, 4 January 2010 - 12:33 pm by Renee Hochstetler

Online education’s increasing role in K-12 schools came to national attention Saturday when NBC ran this story about distance learning trends in U.S. high schools.

The highlights

Virtual classes:

  • Grant access to elective courses not available at every brick-and-mortar school, opening more opportunities and choices for students
  • Provide a balance between the independence of online classes and advantages of classroom learning
  • Enable flexible scheduling so that other options are possible

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The story is just over two minutes and well worth a watch.

Haiku LMS users are ahead of the curve

The Online School for Girls is shining example of a collaborative endeavor that provides additional courses to students at participating brick-and-mortar schools. The virtual school uses Haiku LMS to connect the students and teachers at the individual schools to an online environment where they regularly engage with each other as well as with the course material.

This type of commitment to education and the interest in sharing knowledge and resources is what we’re about at Haiku, and we’re excited to see that teachers and students are embracing online options.