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Get More (from) Mobile & Take a Different View on Discussions: What’s New in Haiku

Renee Springer Hochstetler — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 19:11:29 +0000

2012 is well underway, and so are updates to Haiku LMS! This time around we have a little something that saves everyone precious time. Take a look!

Haiku Mobile. You can read so much of your Haiku LMS content on an iPad. And this just in: Now you can see grades, too! Up next: Teachers will be able to enter grades!

Discussions. Keeping it simple(r). As a teacher, you click on a Discussion topic and what do you see? Student posts, right? Well, if you want to see all the posts by one particular student, you have a new option in the “More” menu: “View This Student’s Posts.” And if you want to enter a grade at that point go right ahead: A new entry field awaits you!

(Major) Assessment Improvements. Once upon a time your network and Haiku Assessments may have miscommunicated. That is, a slow network could cause Assessments to lag. Though a rare occurrence, this simply cannot be! So it no longer is. We added a number of failsafes to ensure that your data remains intact and your Assessments keep up-to-speed.

We made many minor fixes and other enhancements, too, and we’ll have another round of updates launching yet in January. Trust us: You’re gonna love them!

Haiku is on the go….on the move….MOBILE!

Renee Springer Hochstetler — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:30:04 +0000

We need your help: We just released a beta version of Haiku for the iPad, and now we need feedback!

What You’ll Experience in Haiku Mobile

Haiku Mobile is meant to be as easy to use as Haiku in your computer’s browser, and that means different interactions for touch interfaces. Because we’re in a beta phase, you’ll find that we’re still implementing features and refining the way things work.

Much of what you already see in Haiku is ready and waiting in Mobile. You’ll see the same class content you have in Pages and Calendar, and you’ll see Announcements, Assessments, Assignments, Discussions, and Dropbox.

One major improvement in the mobile web app is the Universal Inbox, which aggregates messages from all your Haiku classes into one Inbox! In the app, you no longer have to go into each class to see messages – they’re all available in a central location!

One important note: the app is a read-only in the beta release. In the coming weeks and months we’ll add the ability to interact and update content. And we’ll roll out Mobile for other devices, too.

How to Access Haiku Mobile (and Give Us Feedback)

Get your iPad ready and then:

Open your Haiku LMS domain in Safari
Log in
In the upper right-hand corner click “My Account” and choose “View Mobile Site”

The screen will refresh and (ta-da!) you’ll be using the web app on your iPad. (At this point you may want to bookmark the app or add an icon.)

When you get going, make notes of what you like and what you don’t. Tell us in our UserVoice forum set up specifically for Haiku Mobile. If you visit the forum and see that someone else has already reported what you’re about to then your job is simple: Cast your vote for that issue or idea so we know more people have seen it or want it!

And those of you who aren’t using Haiku Mobile have big things coming your way in 2012, too. Check out our plans for next year, and let us know what you think!

Share. Go Mobile. Be Beautiful. 10 fantastic features for 2012.

Renee Springer Hochstetler — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:42:15 +0000

2011 has been a big year for Haiku. We introduced Google Apps integration and the Haiku Course Catalog, and we’re nearly ready to unveil an open beta version of Haiku Mobile. We more than doubled the number of teachers and students in 2011.

2012 promises to be equally exciting, and it’s full steam ahead!

10 Fabulous Features You’re Gonna Love

When we reviewed requests, we quickly discovered common themes that in turn helped us identify ten features to focus on:

Haiku Mobile (for Tablets). Access your Haiku LMS classes in a sleek interface designed specifically for mobile devices. Mobile will be a rolling release, so we’ll update it often just like we do LMS.
Haiku ThemeMaker. Make a Haiku LMS class truly yours by choosing colors and graphics with a few quick clicks! No need to know HTML or CSS. The same is true for the Portal and ePortfolio. What’s more, a teacher’s view of Haiku will match the students’.
Resource Library. You’re ready to get going with Haiku, and you face the potentially daunting moment: a blank page. How should you structure your class? What pages should you make, and where can you find really good content? That’s where the Resource Library comes in! Search the pool of content (classes, pages, and content blocks) that other teachers and resource librarians add to the collection and bring it into your class!
Manage Assessment by Individual. Not everyone learns at the same pace, so they shouldn’t have to be tested on that basis. Open an assessment for a single student, a group of students, or the entire class, and provide additional time for students who may need more time to complete the assessment.
Dropbox Enhancements With Grid-Based Gallery. Fine arts and media teachers will find this particularly helpful: View many documents at one time in a grid layout. Make feedback a class activity by allowing students to review peers’ work and to rate and respond to custom criteria on entries. Students and teachers can even post their entries for public feedback (when enabled) via Facebook and other social media.
Student Work Summary. As a teacher, you can see which students completed an assignment, but you can’t see which assignments a student completed. Get an aggregated view of a student’s work to quickly identify what’s missing and what’s below an acceptable threshold (which the teacher sets in order to receive alerts!)
Progress Reports/Report Cards. You have all your grades in Haiku, but to produce progress reports you had to venture outside the LMS. No longer! Teachers and/or schools can create customized progress reports directly in Haiku!
Soft Delete. You spent time and energy to create a page and wonderful content, and despite all that careful attention accidentally deleted your work! Relax: You can undo that.
Haiku Chat. Instant communication can be a great way to collaborate when students aren’t in the same physical classroom. Easily connect everyone in your classroom in a few clicks. And since instant messaging can become just another way for students to distract each other when you want them to focus on the material, you can turn off Haiku Chat as you see fit (say, when an online test starts).
Haiku Push API (with Intelligent Papers Integration). With so much happening in your Haiku class, how can you easily keep the other tools you use in your classroom up to date? Third-party developers, approved by your school, can automatically have information pushed to them as you work on your class (e.g. creating assignments, adding page content, or updated grades).

Even More for You to Love

The top ten is just the beginning. We have more in store!

Document QuickView. Save (more) time. Get a glimpse of what’s in a file without spending the time to download and open it.

Proctor Passwords for Assessments. You’ve created an assessment for students to take in a proctored setting, but what’s to keep them from starting the test without you? Guarantee that the proctor is present by providing a password just before the assessment begins.

Additional Assessment Enhancements. “We really like Haiku’s Assessments feature, and it would be so much better with _____ !”

Multiple Multiple Choice
Randomized Pool of Questions
Grading short answer/essay responses by question instead of by student.
The ability for students to see one question at a time when taking an Assessment.

Gradebook Enhancements. The Gradebook is great for recording scores. Now it’s time to further extend with Drag & Drop organization, printable gradebooks, and a variety of other upgrades to help teachers identify areas where students need improvement:

Print class grade chart
Export and print grades by Roster Section
Display Gradebook category subtotals
Autofill scores for Gradebook entries
Flag underperforming students and notify the teacher
Display graphs per assignment to track student performance (e.g. average, median, max, mean, and breakdown by grade notation)

Embed the Web™ Enhancements. With so many widgets on the web, why does Embed the Web™ have a limited set? Well, that limitation keeps your classroom data secure from hackers. By improving the way we separate third party code from your class data, you’ll be able to safely embed any widget you wish, including Twitter and others that are currently blacklisted.

Drag & Drop File and Folder Uploads. You know that file you want to give your students – the one you have to dig through folders and folders to find? Instead of clicking an “Upload File” button in Haiku and navigating to the file, just drag and drop it (a file or a folder) from your computer to Haiku’s HTML5 compliant uploader.

WikiProject Templates and Versioning. You assign a WikiProject. Your students create a WikiSite. Give them a jump start — a basic template they can update with text, video, audio, and so on. As the teacher, you can see which students made changes and roll back to earlier versions of a WikiSite.

Discussion Enhancements. With so many topics and responses, surely there must be a way to read them easily! These improvements are coming down the line:

New threaded discussions view
Subject lines on posts
Filter and search
Faster performance

If your school subscribes to:

TurnItIn…make use of their anti-plagiarism and notation tools.
Jigsaw Webconference or Adobe Connect…use their tightly integrated webconferencing services.
Google Apps for Education…use Gmail instead of Haiku Inbox for your intraclass communications and Google Calendar to add events to your Haiku class (and vice versa).

Oh, and you can have multiple calendars in each class, too! (And for those of you using iCal, integration is on the way.)

Domain Control Application Tab. Domain Administrators can easily turn on and configure third party services like SIS integration from the Domain Control.

Organizational Admins. When you have multiple organizations, you need a way to give someone the ability to control one or some, but not all of them. Enter the Organizational Admin, which limits the person to working with a particular set of users.

Class Statistics Enhancements. Get your stats faster and fancier. The data loads quickly and displays in an attractive graph so you can get the whole picture. And those graphs are generated in HTML5 so they’re available on mobile devices!

Under the hood. Our hardware infrastructure will receive attention to improve redundancy, speed, and robustness.

We plotted our path in a spirit of collaboration.

Deciding how to advance Haiku is an intensive process. Previous years’ intelligence gives us a general direction, and as we gather feedback from our teachers, administrators, students, and parents we track trends in education. We sift through every single entry in our UserVoice feedback forum. We identify themes. We shoulder-tap educators.

And then we spend four days hunkered down as a team to plan the major roll outs for the next year. We each champion different features based on our conversations with teachers and others, and though we don’t exactly come to blows, we do engage in lively debate until the way forward is clear! The updates you see above are those that made the cut. Still, we each continue to advocate for features we know will make educators’ lives a little easier, and as we’re able to add to our roadmap we’ll work these in:

Haiku Mobile Responder
Rubrics
Standards integration
Objective-Based Gradebook
Badges and uBoost Integration

Finally, we must give honorable mention to a few ideas that we heard loud and clear and yet simply couldn’t fit into the roadmpap: ePortfolio Enhancements (mainly Dual Templates) and Comment Aggregation.

We conclude with gratitude.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to those of you using Haiku. You continue to inspire our team’s creativity with yours and help us evolve Haiku to meet the changing needs of the modern classroom. We tip our hats to you!

Minor Updates = Major Usability Improvements

Renee Springer Hochstetler — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:23:55 +0000

We’ve been quiet. We’ve been busy, hunkered down rounding out our plans for the next year and putting final touches on projects already in the works. We’ll announce our grand plans for 2012 next week, and in the meantime we’ve launched some enhancements to Haiku LMS.

Search Embed the Web™ widgets. Thanks to excellent recommendations from teachers, our Embed the Web™ library includes more than 150 widgets – third-party services like TokBox and Vimeo – that make your Haiku class more dynamic and interactive. And we’re always open to more suggestions, including making widgets easier to find!

Improved HTML editor. Those of you using iOS devices are going to love this: We’ve updated Haiku to use the latest version of the HTML editor so it works oh so much better on iOS devices. And if you’re using an iPad, this gives you more possibilities even before we release our mobile app!

Ready to effortlessly accept online registration & payments?

Renee Springer Hochstetler — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 14:56:35 +0000

You’ve designed excellent courses. You’ve set them up them in Haiku LMS. Now you need students to know their options, or maybe you have a set of professional development courses you want to package into a nice, neat (online) catalog. Oh, and if people could register and (optionally) pay online, that would be a huge help…

Oh, how you’ll love Haiku Course Catalog!

Course Catalog is essentially an online shopping cart, an add-on feature that enhances the School Version of Haiku LMS. Once you’ve created classes in LMS, you add them to Course Catalog, presenting them in a way that’s easy for people to browse, enroll, and pay by credit card for in a few simple steps.

It’s hassle-free for you: We handle the payment processor, gateway, and security so you can effortlessly process credit cards.

Course Catalog Is As Easy to Use As LMS

If you follow our blog, then this will sound familiar, and that’s because we released Course Catalog earlier this summer. This latest release includes enhancements like setting how many days a class is available to a student.

You (optionally) set the date range Course Catalog should list a class. You (also optionally) set the data range students can enroll in a class.

See how it’s done!

If you’re ready to explore the possibilities of Course Catalog, contact us for more information on pricing and how to get set up.

P.S. Haiku LMS will soon be on the move!

For those of you patiently waiting for a Haiku app, your wait is nearly over: In a few short weeks we’ll release an open beta version of Haiku Mobile. Drop us a line if you’d like to know when it’s ready.

Making a Move from Moodle? Haiku Now Makes It Easier With Imports

Renee Springer Hochstetler — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:35:39 +0000

Import content from Moodle into Haiku LMS

When you’ve worked hard to create an online classroom or website in one learning management system, it’s daunting to think about having to redo your work in another LMS. Well, if you use Moodle and make the move to Haiku LMS, now you can bring much of your content along.

Easily Import Content From Moodle Into Your Haiku LMS Class

We’ve taken a phased approach to importing content. In this first release, teachers can export their content in what Moodle calls “Topical Format.” Haiku LMS will import pages, text, and images. Our KnowledgeBase article provides specific information, including the how-to.

This release of Haiku LMS includes other fixes and minor changes, too. Read the complete release notes.

Take It to the Next Level with Safe Exam Browser, Payment Processing, and Easy Imports

Renee Springer Hochstetler — Sat, 28 May 2011 14:00:08 +0000

Ensure exam integrity. Enable online payments. Integrate with another SIS. You have so many possibilities with the latest updates to the School Version of Haiku LMS. We’re sure you’ll be pleased!

Get to Know What’s New

Our recent changes include a number of minor updates and bug fixes, but below is what’s really exciting.

Safe Exam Browser. Teachers can now require students to take assessments in Safe Exam Browser (SEB). SEB is a lockdown browser that helps prevent copying and pasting answers to and from the test among other security features. Safe Exam Browser is available to School Domains and can be configured and turned on by a Domain Admin. Your school’s Haiku administrator enables the option to use SEB, and educators say when it’s required.

Watch screencast on how to enable and install SEB >>
Watch screencast on how to require students to use SEB >>

Course Catalog. If you’ve put together a stellar professional development program and are ready to enroll participants, Haiku provides an easy way to package your classes and process online payments. The Course Catalog is basically an online shopping cart, your classes the products. Schools set up the courses, and participants sign up, pay, and get started in a few simple steps!

Course Catalog is an add-on feature to Haiku LMS, and schools will need to contact the sales team for more information on pricing and how to get set up.

Senior Systems Easy SIS Imports: You have another option when it comes to Plug & Play Student Information System (SIS) integrations: My Backpack™ Web Portal. Haiku will automatically sync with your SIS – no .csv required! All you need to get rolling is your username and password, and an open port in your firewall. Many thanks to The Madeira School and St. Mary’s Episcopal School for helping make this enhancement possible.

Senior Systems Plug & Play can be configured for your school. You’ll just need to contact Haiku support for information on how to get started.

We say it with every release, and the sentiment holds: Thanks to all our users for their excellent ideas and suggestions that continue to keep Haiku LMS at the forefront of educational technology!

Homework Annotator: Over 25,000 Documents Graded!

mindy — Wed, 04 May 2011 12:38:52 +0000

That’s right! In the three short months since we released the homework annotator – Haiku LMS users have already processed over 25,000 documents. That’s a lot of grading!

How Does it Work?

Here’s the thing, it is so incredibly easy to use the homework annotator. Those who tried it have figured that out. Consider this scenario: Student submits homework using the dropbox in Haiku LMS. Teacher opens homework document in Haiku LMS. Teacher annotates homework assignment in Haiku LMS. Teacher closes document and returns to student via the dropbox in Haiku LMS. See the theme here? That’s right – it’s all done in Haiku LMS. No downloading, opening, updating, saving, uploading… “Now where did I put that?” required.

What Kind of Docs Can I Annotate?

Using the annotator, you can write on top of Word documents, Excel documents and even PDF’s. And again, all of this is done right within your browser – using Haiku LMS. This works nicely with the Google Docs integration that we’ve already told you about. Students can seamlessly pull in their Google documents and teachers can annotate until their hearts desire.

Math & Science Homework, Too?

Oh yes, if you are a math or science teacher you will love the annotator! Our friends at TutorTrove have done a terrific job making it easy to use symbols and formulas as well. “We saw math and science teachers trying to make other annotators fit their needs.” says Eli Luberoff, Founder and CEO of TutorTrove. “We are pleased to fix this pain with the powerful math and science tools we’ve brought to the annotator in the Haiku LMS.” Once you know a few tips and tricks you can easily add and edit those seemingly difficult symbols.

In Conclusion.

It’s worth your time to give it a try if you have not already done so. “Combining the homework annotator with the ability to seamlessly use Google Docs in Haiku LMS is going to save teachers and students an amazing amount of time,” says Bryan Falcón, Haiku Learning’s CEO. “That means we are doing our job.”

Get Started.

If you’re already a user, check out our video to see how you can begin using the homework annotator. If you really want to dig in, you can view our recorded Webinar where TutorTrove explains the annotator in detail. New users can create a free account and set up your own Haiku class to try the homework annotator and all our other features!

Easy imports: Plug & Play Student Information System (SIS) Integration just released!

mindy — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:24:01 +0000

Introducing the ﬁrst in a series of Plug & Play Student Information System (SIS)
integrations. This means automatic synchronization of student data – simply with a
username and password.

We are pleased to announce integration with Veracross SIS.

What is Plug & Play?

“Plug and Play” is a buzz phrase. Ultimately it means that one device, or in this case
piece of software, is able to talk to or connect with another piece of software without
special conﬁguration or user intervention.

Why Plug & Play for SIS?

When provided with the right information to connect the systems, Haiku LMS is
programmed to know exactly how to interpret and import the data from a speciﬁed SIS.
Users, classes and rosters in Veracross show up in Haiku LMS automatically within an
hour. Setup is extremely painless. Imagine the time savings here.

More to Come

Veracross SIS is the first, but you’ll see more integration in the near future! Can we still
import data from other Student Information Systems? Yes, of course. That has not and
will not change. Stay tuned in the next couple months as we continue to develop these
Plug & Play options for quick and easy population. Your SIS may be coming soon.

Special Thanks

Thanks to the American School of Bombay (ASB) for bringing this plug & play
integration request to us – we believe many users will beneﬁt as a result. Thanks also to
the great group of developers and leaders at Veracross who worked diligently with us to
get this up and running.

Google Docs integration comes to Haiku LMS. Create. Annotate. Review. File free.

Renee Springer Hochstetler — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 22:06:05 +0000

Haiku LMS is the only LMS to give you a means to search your Google Docs files and hand them in without leaving the LMS.

Google Docs Integration. Bring Google Docs into Haiku where you might otherwise upload a file. Import Google Docs as attachments or as collaborative documents. What’s more, upload Microsoft Office files and convert them to Google Docs within Haiku. See how it works >>
Improved Homework Annotator. It’s faster and better than ever! Easily scroll and zoom. To annotate, just swipe and type. Rotate and position elements to your heart’s delight. Teachers will love the improved interface and the quick annotation tool. Students will love that they don’t have to download a file to see what a teacher said. Let us show you >>

Imagine the Simplicity: A Scenario

Say a teacher assigned an essay in Haiku LMS. Here’s one way the homework is handled without leaving the browser:

The student reads the assignment and then creates a new Google Doc.

The student then searches for their Google Doc from the Haiku Dropbox and hands the document in.

The teacher then opens it in Haiku’s Annotator to comment and grade, returning it to the student via the Dropbox.

The student is notified via email or SMS that they have a response from their teacher, they visit the Dropbox to read the response.

Notice what’s missing? Yes – downloading and uploading files. And in between no renaming and organizing files, remembering where they are, or running into previous or outdated versions.

The Google Doc Block and Google Doc Attachments are only available once your Administrator grants “Data Access” rights from your school/district’s Google Dashboard.

For more information on how to turn this feature on, read this article.

Well, what do you think?

If you use Haiku then you know that our users drive our development. They tell us what they need, vote on ideas, and help us move in the direction most useful for education. They also tell us about the other tools they use in their classes and how they use them.

So let’s hear it: How do you plan to use the new features to enhance your virtual or blended classroom to engage your students?

Special Note

The original version of this post erroneously indicated that the Homework Annotator supported iWork files. That’s in the works, but not yet available. We apologize for any inconvenience this caused people who use Haiku LMS.