A powerful tool, Google has served many purposes in the past as a search engine, email provider, and app source. This year at St. Paul Academy and Summit School, it’ll play an even bigger role in the classroom as a more prominent intermediate between students and teachers for homework, papers, and other class work. Recently, the technology department in the upper school has decided to test out a new feature on Google, a program called Hapara. “With all the research we’ve done it seems like a great tool. The plan is to roll it out in the upper school in the next couple of weeks,” Director of Data Integration Sue Scott said.

In the past, certain classes have used Google Drive in the classroom, but this new tool will make it much easier for teachers to operate the system and for students to work on their assignments efficiently. Sophomore Stephanie Li uses Google Drive currently, and although she likes it, she thinks that “if you’re traveling you can’t really use it.” As for Hapara, Scott is optimistic that it’ll bring change to the Upper School. “[Hapara] organizes Google Drive by class, otherwise each individual teacher has to set that up by themselves,” Scott said. “The real change is in Google and how we’re going to use it,” she said “[Hapara] will impact how they teach.”