haiku LMS

We are working on a number of business related changes at HAIKU, all of which are designed to help educators teach and students learn.  That was the reason Bryan and I started HAIKU and it is the driving force behind everything we do.  We started, in April 2006, with the belief that our collective vision and skill combined with the expertise of some really smart partners could play a small but important role in the improvement of our collective educational experience.  We believed (as did you, most likely, if you are reading this) in the power of learning.  And for every learner there is a teacher.  We know a lot of them.

What they want, what almost all of them live for, is to facilitate learning; to play a role in the collection of knowledge and wisdom.  Two years ago we knew that there were ways to make it easier for these teachers to teach.  They have stuff to do; stuff that is sometimes marginal at best to the learning process.  Yet teachers find themselves spending a greater and greater share of their available energy and time NOT teaching.  Bryan and I spent the four years prior to starting HAIKU designing and building very specific tools to help specific educators reduce that share of NOT teaching.  So we knew firsthand that there was time to be saved; time that is much better used helping students learn.  Naturally, creating Haiku LMS was the next thing to do.

And we are not finished.  Next year we will provide teachers access to content in a couple of mouse clicks that was created by tens of thousands of other teachers just like them.  Later, that same content will be presented as optional supplements to teachers on Haiku LMS, organized by the academic standards addressed in the exams the teachers create.  Oh, we're just getting started.

As lifelong learners, we are not unaware of the things we know now that we didn't know in April 2006.  Perhaps the most significant of those is the importance of reporting.  On our journey to create software that gives teachers more time to teach, we neglected the needs of some other very important educators.  The administration.

School administrators feel the pressure to show results.  This is both a personal emphasis on doing a good job and an acknowledgment of external pressures from those to whom they report or are accountable.  After focusing almost exclusively on the needs of teachers, we realize that administrators have unique needs as well, yet the problems they face are similar: far too little time.

As you can imagine, the specific needs of administrators and teachers are often different.  Yet the outcomes are the same.    They are all educators who find themselves with less and less time to affect learning.  Again, we don't claim to meet every need, but we sure can help.   In October we will launch the first in a series of upgrades designed to provide reports on the experiences of students within a Haiku LMS class.  Eventually, this will lead to specific reports on the effectiveness of Haiku LMS in general and the specific content and activities within Haiku LMS on the learning process.  Teachers who use Haiku LMS already know how it saves time and positively affects learning.  These upgrades will give administrators the proof that this is true and the data necessary to further improve the learning process. 

About those "business related" changes I mentioned earlier... I'll tell you more when the dust has settled.  For now, I'll just say that HAIKU is growing and expanding.  We believe that a healthy company should be proactive when looking toward a healthy future.  To this end, we will soon have even more resources resulting in an ever greater ability to help educators teach and students learn.  For those of you who are already part of the HAIKU family, I want to thank you for your support and wisdom.  Our collective futures are as bright as ever and we are honored to be on this journey with you.