Documentation
How to run a stack, and what the software will not do
Written for the person holding the camera, a homeschool parent as often as a teacher. If this page and the screen disagree, the screen is right and this page needs a fix.
If you teach your own children
Sign up with your own email and a password. There is nobody to wait for: you are the teacher and the office both, and the account is yours the moment you make it.
Add a subject, add your children by first and last name, and photograph something. Class numbers and school IDs are for schools, and nothing here asks you for one.
Getting started
Sign up, add your children or import a class list, then install the app on the phone you'll photograph with. Adding it to the home screen matters more than it sounds: capture becomes one tap, and the camera opens where you left it.
You don't need an assignment or an answer key before you start shooting. Photograph first; file afterwards.
Rosters and name matching
A home roster needs first and last names, nothing more. A school roster can also carry a class number and a school ID, which is how a paper with only “3” written at the top still finds its student.
Nicknames help. If the name on a paper can't be matched confidently, the paper waits for you rather than being filed under a best guess.
Scoring cards
A card on a student changes how their paper is counted, not how it's read. Three rules are available: count only the items they completed, count only the items on a list, or give credit for correct process where the work is shown.
Set it once from the roster and it applies every time that student's paper comes through. Papers with a card are flagged in review so you see the rule that was used.
The card holds scoring rules and nothing else. No diagnosis, no plan, no medical note. The model is told how to count the paper and never told why.
Staff and permissions
Households have one adult account and need no invitations. Schools have three roles: an administrator who opens the school year and manages classes, a teacher who confirms keys and finalizes scores, and an assistant assigned to particular classes.
An assistant can photograph and match papers. They cannot confirm an answer key, mark a score final, or throw a paper away. Every change is recorded with who made it.
Exports
A CSV aligned to your roster: student number, name, assignment, points earned, points possible, percentage and status. Drafts are marked as drafts, so a gradebook import never quietly takes an unconfirmed number.
Homeschool records export the same way, which is usually what an evaluation or a records request wants.
What it cannot do
Four rules, each enforced in code and covered by tests. They're the reason the sample worksheet scores nine proved instead of ten.
Plain arithmetic is recomputed, not trusted. What can't be recomputed is shown as read, never as proved.
A photograph too poor to read is graded as nothing at all. A bad scan must not cost a student points.
A paper whose name can't be read waits for a person. It is never filed under a best guess.
No model finalizes a score. Written work is never scored by one — it gets counted mechanics and a suggested range, and the number stays yours.
And the practical limits, so you meet them here first
There is no offline capture. A photograph is megabytes and has to reach the server to be read, so a room with no signal is a room where the stack waits.
HEIC photographs cannot be read. iPhones shoot HEIC by default; taking the picture through the camera button here converts it, but one chosen from the camera roll may arrive in a format nothing can open, and you are told so rather than left guessing. Settings › Camera › Formats › Most Compatible settles it.
A page has to be legible in the photograph. Shadow across the page, a fold through the answers, or a hand that is genuinely hard to read all end the same way: nothing is scored, and you are asked to look. Read it again, photograph it again, or throw the paper away — an assistant cannot, and a finalized paper has to be unfinalized first, but the pages do leave storage with the row and the deletion is recorded.
Answers in unusual notation — nested brackets, a diagram, a drawn number line — are read and shown but not recomputed. They are reported as read, never as proved.
A classroom scanner's PDF is not a stack yet. Export JPEG or PNG pages from the copier, or photograph them.