Virtual Teacher · the not-in-one-room facet of the platform
The class that is not in one room -- coursework, turn-in, and grades. No live-video claim.
A name like Virtual Teacher invites one assumption: a live-video classroom. We are not going to let that assumption stand unchallenged. There is no video call, no screen-share, and no synchronous virtual classroom built into this platform today -- that is an honest gap, not a marketing footnote. What IS built and running is the rest of teaching a class that does not meet in one room: course content a student can open on their own time, assignments with a real online turn-in and a grade that lands in the record, teacher announcements, a discussion board a school can turn on for its own students, and a read-only summary a linked guardian can see. Here is exactly what that is, and is not.
Course shell, assignments and online turn-in, gradebook passback, announcements, and LTI interop are shipped. The discussion board is a per-school switch, off until a school’s own admin turns it on. Live video is not built. We say so before we say anything else.
What this page is not claiming
There is no live video, no screen-share, and no synchronous virtual classroom anywhere in this platform today. Which video approach to build and which provider to use is still an open question inside the team building this -- not a shipped feature waiting for a marketing page to catch up. We are naming that plainly, at the top of the page, rather than let a domain named Virtual Teacher imply a live-class capability that does not exist.
What follows on this page is real: it is the coursework side of teaching a class that is not in one room -- content, assignments, grades, announcements, a discussion board, and a guardian summary. If a live-video virtual classroom is what brought you here, this page is not that yet, and we would rather tell you now than have you find out after you look.
What is built
Every item below is code that runs today, read against the same shared roster and single-school FERPA wall the rest of the platform enforces. Where a piece is off by default or priced, the card says so plainly.
The student course shell
A student who is enrolled in a section opens their course home and sees an ordered walk through its content: lessons, assignments, and discussions, with an honest at-a-glance next-due item. A student who is not enrolled sees nothing -- not a locked preview, nothing. A draft unit a teacher has not published is instructor-only; a student never sees it early. Shipped
Assignments, online turn-in, and gradebook passback
A teacher posts an assignment to a section; an enrolled student turns work in online, and a score writes back to the same gradebook record the rest of the platform reads -- one grade of record, not a separate spreadsheet. Reading a submission is walled the same way authoring one is: an account-management role never sees student work. Shipped
Teacher announcements
A teacher-of-section posts an announcement to their section; enrolled students and their guardians see a reverse-chronological stream on the course home. A draft announcement is instructor-only until it is published. A viewer who is not enrolled sees nothing. Shipped
The class discussion board -- a per-school switch
The threaded, teacher-moderated discussion board is built and runs today. It is OFF BY DEFAULT for every school; a school’s own admin has to turn it on before any student sees it or can post to it. Until a school flips that switch, its students get an honest not-available response, never a fabricated empty board pretending to be live. Only a current section member ever reads or posts; moderation is the teacher-of-section, never a student or a guardian. Shipped -- off until a school enables it
A read-only guardian summary
A linked guardian sees a per-child summary -- upcoming and late coursework, recent grades, and an honest empty state where there is nothing to show -- for their OWN child only, resolved server-side from the guardian link on file. A guardian with no linked child sees zero children, never a placeholder. Shipped
LTI 1.3 launch, deep linking, and grade passback
A school can register this platform with its existing LMS over the LTI 1.3 standard: a staff launch signs a user in and drops them into the right book or course item, an adviser can deep-link one assignment back into that LMS, and a scored assignment can pass a grade back over the same standard. This is a standards connection, not a claim to replace a school’s existing LMS. Shipped
Course-package import
An adviser can import an existing course package -- the content already built for a standards-based course shell -- and have it land as draft assignments ready to schedule and publish, instead of rebuilding a course from a blank page. Shipped
Live formative checks-for-understanding
A teacher can push one question at a time to a class and watch per-option counts and a correctness distribution update in real time as students answer on their own devices. This is real time, but it is a quiz-paced check, not a video class. It is part of the priced curriculum module for the teacher’s control panel; a student’s own answer is never paywalled. Names on the class-wide dashboard are consent-gated and redacted by default. Shipped -- teacher controls priced
How the pieces fit -- and where the platform stops today
The design point is one class record, read from every surface: the course shell’s enrollment check, the assignment’s gradebook write, the announcement stream, and the discussion board’s section-member wall all resolve against the same enrolled-student roster. A student who is not on that roster sees nothing on any of these surfaces -- not a locked teaser, not a partial view.
What the platform does not yet do is put a teacher and a class of students into the same real-time video room. Teaching a class that is not in one room usually means two things at once: the asynchronous coursework (content, assignments, grades, announcements, discussion) and the synchronous session (a live video meeting). This page, and this platform, ship the first half. The second half -- a video provider, a meeting link, a synchronous virtual classroom -- is an open build decision, not a wired feature, and we are not going to describe it as available to make the page read better.
Student data, said plainly
Coursework, grades, announcements, and discussion posts are FERPA education records, scoped to exactly one school by a database-layer wall, not a role check an admin can waive. An account-management role is hard-denied from reading student work on every surface above; only a teacher-of-section, an enrolled student reading their own record, or a linked guardian reading their own child’s summary can see it.
A discussion post is authored under the poster’s own signed-in identity, never a name a client can claim on someone else’s behalf. A guardian sees only the child they are actually linked to, resolved server-side -- never a fabricated child, never another family’s record. Student data here is never used for advertising, never sold, and never handed to a data broker.
How the money works, honestly
The course shell, assignments and turn-in, gradebook passback, announcements, the discussion board, the guardian summary, and LTI interop run on the platform’s free core -- no seat license to read a shared class record. Live formative’s teacher control panel is part of the priced curriculum module; a student’s own answer is never gated behind it.
This is honest-off money: there is no pricing table and no checkout on this page, and nothing here takes a live charge. A conversation with a school works out which pieces it needs.
Common questions
Is this a live video classroom?
No. There is no video call, no screen-share, and no synchronous virtual classroom built into this platform today. Which video approach to build is still an open question, not a wired feature. This page describes the coursework side of a class that is not in one room -- content, assignments, grades, announcements, and a discussion board -- and says the live-video gap plainly rather than imply it with the domain name.
Can students post to the discussion board today?
Only if their own school has turned it on. The board is built and runs, but it is off by default for every school until that school’s own admin enables it. Until then, a student gets an honest not-available response.
Does a grade a teacher enters actually land on the student’s record?
Yes. Scoring an online submission writes to the same gradebook record the rest of the platform reads -- there is no separate spreadsheet to reconcile.
Can a guardian see their child’s coursework here?
A linked guardian sees a read-only summary -- upcoming and late coursework and recent grades -- for their own child only. A guardian with no link on file sees zero children, never a placeholder record.
Does this replace our school’s existing LMS?
No, and we do not claim it does. The LTI 1.3 connection lets this platform launch into and hand assignments and grades back to a school’s existing LMS over a standard interface. It is an interop seam, not a replacement claim.
How is this different from teach.software?
teach.software is the classroom teacher’s own day-to-day roster, gradebook, and assignment home for a class that meets in a room together. Virtual Teacher is the narrower, newer layer built specifically for coursework when the class is not sharing a room: the course shell, online turn-in, the discussion board, and the guardian summary. See teach.software for the daily in-room surface and instructor.software for non-classroom instructors.
What this page is, and is not, claiming
Virtual Teacher runs the coursework side of a class that is not meeting in one room: the enrolled-only course shell, assignments with online turn-in and gradebook passback, teacher announcements, LTI 1.3 interop, and course-package import are shipped. The discussion board is shipped as an engine, off by default until a school’s own admin turns it on. Live formative checks-for-understanding are shipped and real-time, priced as part of the curriculum module, with the student’s own answer never gated. The guardian summary is read-only and shows only a linked guardian’s own child. There is no live video, no screen-share, and no synchronous virtual classroom built into this platform today -- we say so plainly rather than let the domain name imply otherwise. Student data is FERPA-scoped to one school, never sold, never used for advertising. This is a for-profit vendor, not a charity. Money is honest-off: no pricing table, no checkout, no live charge on this page. There are no invented stats, adoption counts, or testimonials here, and no competitor is named.