Differences Between a Teacher Account and a Student Account

Have you ever wondered “What’s the difference between a Teacher Account and a Student Account?” We know, it sounds obvious... one is for teachers and the other is for students. But there’s a lot more to it, and you’re totally right if you’re asking yourself what does one have that the other doesn’t. Here is the answer. 

Teacher

Pro-Tip: It is not possible to convert a teacher account to a student account (or vice versa). If you’d like to practice taking the same lessons as your students, you need to create a student account. Your new student account can have the same email and password as your teacher account. You can create a free student account here.

What your teacher portal empowers you to do

Through the teacher portal you manage most student account settings. However, if you wish, you can also choose to give your students a measure of control over their use of the program. 

We've set it up this way so students can focus on progressing in their lessons in whatever way you think is best. For instance, if you find that a lesson is too difficult or unnecessary, you can restrict access to that lesson at any time.

For all your classes there's a series of class settings that let you design your students' program experience. In general, a "checked" or selected setting (see image)

means students can individually decide how to use (or not) the specific feature. By default, class settings will appear selected when you first visit the settings for a class. Below is the list of class settings you control from your teacher portal. 

  • General Options -> Lesson Progression - Allow/disallow redoing completed lessons and/or lesson screens. You can also allow/disallow non-sequential progression, and allow (or not) students to restart a screen at any point.
  • Lesson Configuration - Allow/disallow use of the backspace key; show or hide the students' on-screen keyboard during lessons.
  • Features - Allow/disallow typing tests. You can also enable/disable the class scoreboard.
  • Account Settings - Allow/disallow account changes, access from small screens, and whether students can toggle typing sounds and dictation.
  • Language Settings - Select the keyboard layout and website language for your class (please note the website language and the curriculum language each has its own setting for language; for example, you can set the site to English and the curriculum to Spanish and vice-versa).
  • Permitted IP Addresses - Control the IP addresses from which students can log in (the IP address is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network).
  • Class Status - Change your class status to Active or Paused.
  • Messages -> Leave a message for your students to see once they log in.
  • Benchmarks -> Set the requirements for Screen Completion (speed and accuracy) and for earning Stars (parameters for accuracy).
  • Lessons -> Select which lessons are active for your class.
  • Games -> Select which typing games are available for your students.
  • Details -> Here you can select the Curriculum language for your class, and change the class name, grade, and period. You can also modify default self-join code for your class to something easier for your students to remember.

Student

Pro-tip: When you create a student account, make sure you choose the right username. Since your username is your account's unique identifier in our system, you won't be able to change it after creating your account. Only teachers can change a student’s username. 

What a student account gives you

Your student account will help you perfect your typing skills by (yes!) doing the lesson work but also by playing and earning achievements. You can create a free student account (even without an email address) and join a teacher's class at any time. It’s that simple!

Through a student account you'll have access to fun videos that explain the importance of typing correctly and provide many useful tips. When you start on your lessons, you’ll earn stars with each lesson screen completed. You can visit your Achievements tab to get an overview of all your accomplishments as you progress through the program and move on from the typing lessons into the Digital Literacy curriculum. 

Student accounts are fun, colorful and packed with great content. You can choose one of many themes (and change it as often as you like!) to give a personal touch to your account. 

If your student account is linked to a teacher's class, some of your settings will be regulated by your teacher for the whole class. For example, your teacher will be selecting which keyboard layout the class will use. Additional choices for your teacher to make are the website language and the curriculum (or lessons) language, among other things. 

The teacher also controls access to your ability to change your password, whether you can use the site on mobile devices, whether your class can see the class scoreboard or not, and much more. If you find restrictions to certain settings you expected to have available the best thing to do is to talk to your teacher and see how they feel about allowing a degree of student control over some configurations. Most teachers don't mind allowing students to make up their own mind regarding preferences such as enabling or disabling typing sounds, access to games, etc.

If your student account is not linked to a teacher's class, you manage all your settings. 

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