In today’s digital world, students need more than just academic skills to navigate online spaces effectively. They also require a strong foundation in digital citizenship. This includes understanding how to use technology responsibly, engage in positive online interactions, and manage their time and focus in digital environments.
How can educators help students build these skills? The answer lies in supporting the development of executive function skills.
By focusing on executive function skills, educators can help students grow as responsible digital citizens. Today on the blog, I’m excited to share Hāpara’s innovative classroom management tools!
Connecting Executive Function Skills to Digital Citizenship
If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you might remember some of the times I’ve featured Hāpara in the past. Including this post on “5 Ways To Create a Positive Classroom Culture With Hāpara,” or this one on, “Using Hāpara to Make Project Based Learning Easier.” Hāpara provides educators with resources to nurture executive function skills and, in turn, positively impact student behavior in digital settings.
What are executive function skills?
Self-control, time management, and the ability to prioritize tasks, are essential for students’ success in both physical and digital spaces. When students struggle with these skills, they can become easily distracted, experience difficulty completing tasks, or engage in negative online behaviors. By building and reinforcing executive function skills, educators can help students develop the self-regulation and focus needed to thrive in any learning environment.
Hāpara’s digital classroom management tools, such as Highlights, are designed to support these efforts. Highlights provides teachers with real-time visibility into students’ online activity. This helps teachers identify teachable moments and provide targeted support. Through positive reinforcement and tailored interventions, teachers can help students practice and strengthen their executive function skills.
For example, let’s say Sarah, a student who excels at starting assignments, often struggles to complete them. With Highlights, her teacher can send her a positive message like, “Great start, Sarah! Keep up the good work.” If the teacher notices that Sarah has navigated to a distracting website, they can gently remind her to refocus and send her a link to a helpful resource. This type of real-time guidance encourages Sarah to stay on track and builds her capacity for self-regulation.
Curious about Hāpara? Book a demo and explore their tools!
Hāpara Highlights: A Digital Citizenship Tool in Action
Hāpara’s Highlights tool allows teachers to monitor student activity within the Chrome browser. This functionality provides teachers with an opportunity to support their students’ development of executive function skills while building digital citizenship. Highlights is more than just a monitoring tool of course. It’s an instructional resource that promotes positive digital behaviors and encourages students to take ownership of their online actions.
Using Highlights, teachers can view which websites students are visiting. This gives them a window into seeing if students are staying on task. They can send messages of encouragement or reminders directly to students. For instance, if a teacher sees that a student is researching a topic but gets distracted by unrelated content, they can step in with a prompt like, “I see you’re researching space travel. Let’s focus on finding more information about Mars.” This redirection helps students develop a habit of maintaining focus and managing distractions.
One of the most powerful features of Highlights is the ability to create “Focus Sessions.” During these sessions, teachers can limit student access to specific websites or resources, reducing distractions and helping students practice goal-oriented behavior. By guiding students through focused browsing sessions, teachers can reinforce executive function skills like task initiation, sustained attention, and goal-directed persistence.
Building a Pathway to Digital Citizenship
Building executive function skills is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Every student develops these skills at a different rate. So Hāpara’s tools offer flexibility for educators to adapt digital experiences to the unique needs of each learner. This flexibility is key to fostering digital citizenship. It allows educators to provide differentiated support based on where each student is in their skill development journey.
For instance, teachers can group students based on their ability to stay focused, complete tasks, or use technology responsibly. By customizing their guidance and interventions, educators can help students at varying levels of executive function skills learn how to navigate digital environments successfully.
Curious about Hāpara? Book a demo and explore their tools!
In addition, Hāpara’s tools are designed to encourage positive reinforcement rather than punitive measures. When a student demonstrates good self-control by staying focused on their work, a teacher can send them a message like, “Excellent work staying on task, Alex! Keep it up.” These positive interactions contribute to a supportive classroom culture. Students feel motivated to develop and showcase their executive function skills.
The Impact of Digital Citizenship on Student Behavior
When students have strong executive function skills, they are better equipped to handle the challenges of digital environments. They can resist distractions, manage their time effectively, and engage in positive online interactions. These experiences can help them become more confident and responsible digital citizens.
If you listen to my Easy EdTech Podcast or if we’ve connected at a workshop, you may have heard me share stories from my time as a classroom teacher in New York City. Hāpara has a big presence in the NYCODE. One Queens middle school provides a case study of how Hāpara’s tools have transformed student behavior.
In this blog post, “How Middle School 74 uses Hāpara Highlights to keep learners focused” you can find the full story. By using Highlights to support executive function development, teachers at this school noticed a significant decrease in off-task behavior. And they saw an increase in students’ ability to stay focused on academic tasks.
Cultivate Digital Citizenship and Executive Function Skills
Are you ready to empower your students with the executive function skills they need to become responsible digital citizens? Hāpara’s suite of tools, including Highlights, can help you provide targeted support, reinforce positive behaviors, and transform your students’ approach to digital learning.
Curious about Hāpara? Book a demo and explore their tools! And learn more about how Highlights can make a difference in your classroom.