Haiku Learning Blog

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!

We’ve heard from teachers and administrators how much more flexibility they could use when working with images in Haiku LMS and how helpful faster features would be. Last week we released a new feature that enables teachers to use Aviary to edit images on-the-fly. Now we’ve taken a few more leaps forward.

Students Soar with Access to Aviary

Students who use Haiku LMS can now use Aviary to update images in their e-Portfolios. Aviary empowers student to:

• Work on their files from any computer – anytime, anywhere- whether at school, at home or somewhere else altogether
• Get immediate feedback from teachers and fellow students
• See exactly how images and creations were made
• Collaborate with other students
• Find additional support through tutorials, demonstrations, forums, and blogs

An update from our last launch: teachers now have the option to use Aviary editing in more places like discussion topics. Teachers can also simultaneously upload multiple files like .pdf and .doc in more places, too.

Faster Loading, Fewer Obstacles

We’re streamlining workflow with every release, and this time around it’s in the form of an updated, faster HTML editor that offers two types of editing: basic and advanced. For users needing to format simply in bold, italics, and so on the basic editor provides clear shortcuts. For users looking for more flexibility and greater control the advanced editor enables them to dig into the code.

Haiku LMS is on the Move

More and more often we saw wish lists that requested that we allow access to Haiku from mobile browsers. Well, we’re ready to grant that wish. You will no longer see the Unsupported Browser screen when you visit Haiku from your Apple or Android Phone. Capabilities are still limited due to the “lite” nature of mobile browsers, but you are free to use what you can.  But do not fear that we will stop here, as we are still scheming of versions for the iPhone/iPad and Android devices.

Keep in Touch

As always, we appreciate the feedback and welcome more input. Let us know what you think!

Ever uploaded an image and then realized it’s not sized quite right or that it needs a bit of touch-up? More to the point, ever feel frustrated that to fix the problem you’d have to open the image in a desktop editor, tweak it, and upload it again? Be frustrated no more! Haiku LMS is now integrated with Aviary, a powerful set of web-based design tools, so that you can edit images on the fly within your Haiku class!

To Bryan Falcón, Executive Vice President of Haiku Learning Systems, Inc., this integration melds perfectly with Haiku’s goal of providing a simple, easy-to-use learning management system. “We believe that one of the greatest obstacles that stands in the way of web “simplicity” is the file upload/download process.  It is clumsy, time-consuming, and unfriendly to all,” he said. “With Aviary, we take one step closer to our end goal of a download-free world. Teachers and students will now be able to create, edit, submit, and assess images and drawings without ever uploading a file from their desktop. This is exciting stuff.”

Take a gander at what Aviary offers to education

With Aviary you can create, edit, modify, enhance, and share digital images and assets. Aviary delivers all of the key features of desktop image editors such as Adobe Photoshop, with the simplicity and accessibility of a web-based application. That means that, as with Haiku LMS, you don’t have to download or install software, and classwork is stored securely online.

Teachers can use Aviary to:

• Provide timely feedback at any point during the creation process
• Monitor student progress in real-time
• Collaborate with colleagues and students on shared materials
• Publish and post class materials and presentations online
• Connect with other teachers and educators
• Find additional support and lesson ideas through forums, blogs, and the Aviary newsletter

The Haiku team is thrilled to include such a powerful tool for our educators and students, and Aviary is, too: “Aviary is very excited to be teaming up with Haiku,” said Michael Galpert, Aviary Co-Founder and Vice President. “Haiku’s lesson and learning management system is the perfect complement to the Aviary tool set. With Aviary and Haiku, teachers will be able to engage and collaborate with students as students acquire new skills and expand their creative capabilities.”

Who’s Using Haiku LMS and Aviary?
Sweat Equity Enterprises!

An education innovation organization that connects and educates young people through design, media, and technology, Sweat Equity Enterprises (SEE) aligns teaching and learning to the needs of the 21st century. They do that by linking students to clients in a mutually beneficial relationship: students get hands-on experience developing original graphics, products, or apparel designs, and organizations get the benefit of students’ creativity and leading-edge ideas.

SEE believes that young people learn best by experiential and team projects that empower them as leaders and tap into their individual skills and passion. Students receive guidance from SEE-trained educators who lead them through a five-step process: design challenge, research, concept development, final concept development, and client presentation. The end result is a student who experienced the creative process in a real-world, real-stakes situation, and a client who has a product they can implement and promote.

SEE has awarded more that $1.5 million in scholarships and education support services to nearly 850 students around the world, and now they are using Haiku LMS and Aviary to extend their reach.

“By embedding the Aviary suite into the Haiku LMS, Sweat Equity can now offer schools and after-school programs an eLearning environment where students learn 21st century skills while creating products through real world design challenges from national brands,” said Leonardo Bullaro Director of Sweat Equity Enterprises. “Haiku and Aviary have been vital in scaling our project-based learning and professional development offerings.”

As always, the Haiku team is excited to see what Haiku LMS users create with new features, and we’d love to hear ways you’re working Aviary into your Haiku class!

Sharing saves you time. If you’re creating content that you just know would be useful to other teachers, share it! Or if another educator has content you’d love to have in your own Haiku LMS class, ask them for it!

We just added a new feature called “Content Sharing” to Haiku LMS. You can share your Content Blocks, Pages, and Classes. It’s a clipboard of sorts that lets you copy your content and send it to another Haiku LMS user for them to import into their class. The recipient is then free to update the information as they’d like — the content isn’t attached to your class.

Go ahead and check it out in your Haiku class, or watch this video tutorial to see what we mean.

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

• Common 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!