Haiku Learning Blog

Thanks to your excellent suggestions and feedback students can now exercise their individual and collaborative creativity in Haiku LMS. That’s right: we just launched WikiProjects and Comments!

What’s New in Version 5 of Haiku Learning Management System

WikiProjects. Empower students to take their creativity online and collaborate with each other to create student websites much like teachers create Pages in Haiku. Entire classes or groups can post content like text, photos, video and so on, and individual students can have their own WikiProjects, too.

Since WikiProjects can also be Assignments, teachers can grade them, too.

Watch tutorial for teachers >>
Watch tutorial for students >>

Comments. Need to provide feedback without assigning a grade? Teachers and students can comment on Pages  and WikiProjects. Great for responding to student projects directly in context, but also excellent for peer-to-peer review! Watch tutorial >>

Improved Date Selector. Now it’s easier to set a deadline or publication date because the date selector – the small calendar that pops up when you click into a date field – is faster and works better in Chrome and Safari.

What’s Next?

We’re already working on the next round of updates. Here are a few highlights of what is in store for you over the next few months:

Versioning System: Track all changes that any user makes to WikiProjects and Pages and revert to previous versions whenever you’d like.

Google Docs: Integrate directly with your Google Doc accounts without ever appearing to leave Haiku LMS.  Embed your collaborative documents directly into a block on a Haiku page!  Fantastic for group projects and brainstorming exercises.

SCORM Player: Run SCORM-compliant content and classes from other publishers in your Haiku class!

DropBox Annotations: Open and annotate Word and PDF files directly in your browser – no need to download or upload the file! (If you visited our booth at ISTE 2010 you got a sneak peek!)

Aggregated Comments: Just for teachers, Haiku will aggregate all comments on WikiProjects and Pages in one place. From there you can see all comments by one student to get a sense of how much and what they say.

When you get rolling with WikiProjects and Comments be sure to drop us a line. We love to hear how students and teachers are using Haiku! And keep the feedback on features coming by sharing your ideas: http://feedback.haikulearning.com.

This is the one you’ve been asking for, teachers: student websites.

We’ve listened to your requests to create something even better then a simple student website: WikiProjects and Comments! We are on the verge of launching these two new collaborative tools and are eager to see what your students can do with them.

WikiProjects. Empower students to take their creativity online and collaborate with each other to create student websites much like teachers create Pages in Haiku. Entire classes or groups can post content like text, photos, video and so on, and individual students can have their own WikiProjects, too. Since WikiProjects can also be Assignments, teachers can grade them, too.

Comments. Need to provide feedback without assigning a grade? Teachers and students can comment on Pages, ePortfolios, and WikiProjects. Great for responding to student projects directly in context, but also excellent for peer-to-peer review!

Improved Date Selector. Now it’s easier to set a deadline or publication date because the date selector – the small calendar that pops up when you click into a date field is faster and works better in Chrome and Safari.

We’re sure teachers and students will love these new features. Stay tuned for our release announcement next week!

What’s Next?

We’re already working on the next round of updates. Here are a few highlights of what is in store for you over the next few months:

Versioning System: Track all changes that any user makes to WikiProjects and Pages and revert to previous versions whenever you’d like.

Google Docs: Integrate directly with your Google Doc accounts without ever appearing to leave Haiku LMS.  Embed your collaborative documents directly into a block on a Haiku page!  Fantastic for group projects and brainstorming exercises.

SCORM Player: Run SCORM-compliant content and classes from other publishers in your Haiku class!

DropBox Annotations: Open and annotate Word and PDF files directly in your browser – no need to download or upload the file! (If you visited our booth at ISTE 2010 you got a sneak peek!)

Aggregated Comments: Just for teachers, Haiku will aggregate all comments on WikiProjects, Pages, and ePortfolios in one place. From there you can see all comments by one student to get a sense of how much and what they say.

As always, these features are strengthened and enhanced by your suggestions, so please be sure to visit our suggestion website at http://feedback.haikulearning.com.

Regards,

Bryan and the Haiku Learning Team

We just released a few new features and updates that enable educators to be even more effective. This release, version 4.4, is all about further engaging students.

Equation Editor. Need to post math equations for your students? No problem! Thanks to new integration with Tutor Trove you can include mathematical symbols for square root, infinity, null, and many more in an Assessment, Assignment, Content Block – nearly any place you can put text. Watch the video tutorial >>

SMS Text Message Notifications. If your students pay more attention to text messages than email that’s ok – Haiku can handle it. Just have them enable SMS text message notifications so that they get a text whenever there’s something new or due. Watch the video tutorial >>

Instant Email Notifications. Want instant info? Change your email notification settings to get messages immediately for each announcement, assignment, and so on.

We updated a lot of little things, too, like enabling inbox attachments for students by default. See the release notes for all the details.

Countless clichés speak to importance of visuals (see this post’s headline for an example), so it’s no surprise that schools are increasingly seeing the value of video technology in the classroom. In fact, a recent survey conducted by Cisco (and reported by eSchoolNews) found that over 50 percent of technology officials in K-12 schools will invest in video technology in the next year. That’s an impressive statistic, and one we’re ready for; the latest Haiku LMS upgrades include improvements to information display:

• Video Encoding. Just like your favorite web video services like YouTube, TeacherTube and Vimeo, Haiku LMS now encodes your videos automatically in a universal, web-friendly format (h.264) when you upload them via a Video Block.
• Improved Video and Audio Playback. Now when you upload a movie in a supported format Haiku LMS will play it back embedded in our new attractive, customized player (includes a timer for your video/audio labs). That means you can play video directly on the page rather than opening another application like QuickTime.
  Watch tutorial >>
• HTML in Assessment Questions. Substance affects style and style substance, and with the ability to include HTML in Assessment multiple choice and matching options educators can provide greater context with links and better convey information with tables, text formatting, and so on.
• Image Captions. When you add inline images to a text block, now you can create and style captions as part of the image upload step.

Of course, the release includes quite a number of other updates and fixes, too – mostly adjustments we’ve made under the hood. You’re welcome to take a peek at the complete release notes. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback!

Now you have more page layout flexibility in your Haiku class! Our latest release continues to emphasize harmony, simplicity, and community by adding options and improving workflow for educators and Domain Administrators.

Text blocks used to be just that: text only. Now use them for so much more:

Inline Images. We’ve simplified steps. Add an image – either from your computer or from the internet – directly within a text block! Exercise your eye for design and change the position and text wrapping however you’d like. Watch the tutorial >

Inline Links. Adding links within a text block isn’t new, but the smoother workflow is! Choose what you want to link to – a website, a page in the current Haiku class, a file (like a PDF), or an email address – enter the information, and you’re all set! Watch the tutorial >

Downloadable Audio/Video Files. Choose whether to hide or provide a link to download the audio and video you post. The choice is yours.

More Attractive Invitations. Domain Administrators have enough to do without worrying about how to prepare Haiku class invitations for every student and parent. For those schools and districts that invite parents rather than import them, now they can print invitations en masse and move on to other items.

Educators and students using our LMS continue to amaze us with their creativity, ideas, and energy, so we’re looking forward to seeing what they do with these latest updates!