With teachers using Chromebooks as a tool for every day assignments, students at DGN are no strangers to Google Drive and the 1:1 technology pilot. Hapara, a feature of Google Drive, is a tool used by teachers to better help organize classrooms. However, with the use of this program come concerns of privacy and data use in the building.
“I am not familiar with Hapara and I’m pretty sure the majority of students aren’t familiar with it either. Teachers never informed us of this program and all the things they have the ability to do with it,” said senior Courtney Brent.
“You don’t have to be 1:1 to use Hapara. It’s really a tool to manage, share, and collaborate through Google,” said Associate Principal Dr. Ken Sorensen.
District 99 is a Google Apps for Education (GAFE) district, so Hapara is an investment costing six dollars per student to improve and organize Google Drive. Teachers see their teacher dashboard through Hapara, but to the students, their drive interfaces look as they always have with the exception of new folders created and pushed out to by teachers.
“The thing we like about Hapara is that you can manage students’ files with them, so as an organization tool it’s really effective,” social studies Justin Ashton said.
Ashton has been a part of the Chromebook pilot for the past two years and has served as a pioneer in using Hapara.
“It’s also nice that you can push files out to the students through Google docs, so you don’t have any of that painstaking work of going through and systematically making new folders for each student, or a new file for each student, or making them copy it from somewhere,” said Ashton.
Hapara capabilities also include the ability for teachers to view what their students are working on from different “views” inside Hapara. This ranges from the “Docs View” that allows teachers to view each student’s most recently updated documents, to the “Sites View” where teachers can view each student’s updated webpages.
Teachers also have “Interact View” where teachers can view what students have open in their browser; see students’ screens in real-time, and post messages to the screens of the whole class.
“It’s just like if we didn’t have [Hapara], I could walk around and look at the screens of the computers and see what they have up. I could see their tabs. But rather than walk around, I can see on my monitor as an itemized list of the URLS that they have open and a snapshot of the work-station of that computer. They [teachers] can’t remote control in, but they can see it,” said Sorensen.
This kind of insight into a student’s computer screen doesn’t end when the bell rings. Teachers can use the views anytime students are in school from 7:00 a.m. to 4:30p.m. But according to Sorensen, a student’s privacy really hasn’t changed at all.
“Students should expect no privacy when they are using district computers accessing through district accounts. It’s just like their locker, its school property,” said Sorensen.
“I think it’s creepy to know that your teachers can look at what sites you have open and your recently uploaded images. All the computers are the school’s property, but I think that we should still have a certain amount of privacy. The lockers are their property but they don’t go just raiding in our lockers,” said junior Charity Ratcliff.
For sophomore Ryan Splavec, Hapara is more of a tool to keep students on track. “[Hapara] isn’t creepy,” said Splavec. “I don’t see it as a violation of my privacy because you shouldn’t be looking at stuff they don’t want you to see at school,” said Splavec.
No limitations are placed on teachers on what teachers can view during the hours of the school day. For students who worry about their privacy when using computers inside the building, Ashton points out that when teachers use these in depth views of students’ activities, it’s more a data issue than anything else.
“Usually when we do have issues with it, it’s a bandwidth thing. Usually when students have multiple browsers open, The more stuff they’re steaming, the harder it is for everyone else to have an efficiently running machine. But absolutely, once in a while, somebody gets distracted and they have a game up and that’s an issue,” Ashton said.
Every classroom’s wireless devices are dependent on nodes, or access points, for network connection in the building. Every classroom has one node with the exception of two classrooms with two and all fine arts classrooms which have three.
“The terminology for this type of access point is called half-duplex. This means that only one device can talk to an access point and receive data at a time. This is different from a desktop computer where a thousand could access at a time,” director of technology Tony Bakken said.
The amount of data that can travel through an access point is measured in bandwidth. About 25 to 30 devices can be supported by the bandwidth available for students; beyond that functionality is lost.
This year there are 171 access points in the school, eight more than last year. Each access point costs about $1,000 to purchasse and install.
According to Sorensen, District 99 spent approximately $1,00,000 on upgrades and a replacemnt of wired compnents for better wireless coverage four years ago.
For Ashton, connection has been vastly improved by the additional nodes, but it’s not perfect yet.
He uses one feature of the teacher dashboard to both monitor students and keep track of who is using what data.
“Usually all I use is [the view] where I can see everything the student has up in a list format, and if they have a game up or music streaming that they shouldn’t really be doing at that moment– that’s the stuff I can see. That’s the stuff I can exit out, and I can send them a message that would say something like ‘Please avoid having music up. It’s taking up too much bandwidth’,” Ashton said.
The 1:1 pilot classrooms are not the only ones running into issues with data use. At the end of the last school year, Google came out with its new program, Google Classroom, which has become another option for teachers to use as an improvement to Google Drive.
Photography teacher Megan Kelly, who is not part of the 1:1 pilot, uses Google Classroom for her students.
“For Google Classroom, we really need things to move faster; there’s only so much precious time in class. Some students in my class have issues with files not showing up or taking 13, 14 page refreshes before anything shows up,” Kelly said.
Google Classroom is an app completely separate from Google Drive and Hapara. It was created solely for teachers to use in the classroom. The Google Classroom does not have an interactive dashboard like Hapara.
“As much as the Chromebooks are a pilot for teachers and students in the classroom, it’s also a trial for our end. We have this time to figure out what we need to do to make it better,” said Bakken. “Our plan is to find more of the “bottle neck” classrooms, where connection is really slow.”
Sorensen says that the school is planning on getting more feedback from students and teacher in the near future. As more problems arise with the data transfer, the school will decide what the best thing to do is. For now, Hapara is a tool for teachers to try out and for students to experience in the classroom.
While students are conflicted on the privacy issues with Hapara, it’s important to know that it is a tool for educational purposes only.
“This is really about learning; it’s not about people trying to spy on each other. Teachers don’t have the time or the interest to be looking at what students are doing outside their class,” Sorensen said.
Rachel Krusenoski | Editor-in-Chief
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Simone Burns | Editor-in-Chief
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