Set up your account and add your class
Sokra works around your classes. Before you build an assistant, it helps to set up one place for each class you teach and add the students who belong in it. That place is called a Space, and it is where your assistants, materials, and learners come together.
This takes about ten minutes for your first class. You do not need any technical knowledge, and your students do not need email addresses.
Before you start
You need to be signed in to your workspace. A workspace is your school or organization in Sokra, and you usually arrive through an invite from whoever set it up. If you do not have access yet, ask your school's Sokra administrator to send you an invite.
Have a rough class list ready, even just the number of students. You can always add more later.
Build your classroom
The order that works for most teachers is simple: create a Space for the class, add your students, and hand out their login cards. Everything below happens inside your workspace, and nothing your students see is live until you decide to share it.
1. Create a Space for your class
In the sidebar, find Spaces and click Create space. Give it a Name your class will recognize, like "Math 7A" or "English 10B", and an optional Description. Create one Space per class or course you teach. Each one stays separate, with its own assistants and its own members.
2. Add your students
Open the People page from your workspace. This is where you invite staff, create student accounts, and organize everyone into groups. Click Add students to create accounts for your class. Choose how many you need, and Sokra generates a username and password for each one. No email addresses are required, so even younger classes can sign in.
3. Hand out login cards
After Sokra creates the accounts, click Print login cards. Each card carries a QR code and a temporary username and password, so a student can scan it, sign in, and set their own password on first login. Print the cards before you close the dialog. You will not be able to see those passwords again afterwards, though you can always reset a password later from the People page.
4. Group your students, then add them to the Space
When you create student accounts you can also use Add to group (optional). A group is a set of students, often a class or a subject, that you can add to a Space all at once instead of one by one. Add your group, or your individual students, to the Space you created in step 1. From then on they see the assistants you prepare for that class, and you see their progress.
Data & safety
Student accounts in Sokra do not need an email address, which keeps personal data to a minimum. Login cards show a temporary password only once, so treat the printed cards like keys and collect or recycle them once everyone has signed in. Student conversations stay private inside your workspace. As a rule, you never need to put a student's full name, address, or other private details into an assistant for it to work.
Tips
- Name Spaces the way you already name your classes. It makes everything easier to find later.
- Create accounts for a whole class in one go rather than one at a time, then print all the cards together.
- Use a group when several students share the same class or subject. You can reuse the group for materials and other Spaces.
Troubleshooting
A student lost their login card. Open the People page, find the student, and reset their password. Sokra generates a new temporary password you can share, and the student sets their own on the next login.
My students do not see anything when they sign in. Check that the students, or their group, are actually added to a Space, and that the Space has at least one published assistant. Learners only see what you have prepared in their Space.
I ran out of student accounts. Each workspace has a limited number of student accounts. If the Add students button is disabled, contact your organization owner to upgrade.