Accounts and classes

There are three ways to end up with a UAVProg account, and the difference matters more than it looks: it decides whether the account has an email address at all.

That one fact decides how you sign in, and who can help when you forget your password.

Account	Email	Signs in with	Who resets a forgotten password
Student, own account	Required	Email or callsign	They do, by email
Student with a class code	None	Callsign only	Only their teacher
Teacher	Required	Email or callsign	They do, by email

Callsigns

Every account has a callsign: a short public name, 3 to 24 characters, using lower-case letters and numbers, with . _ - allowed in the middle but not at either end.

For an account with an email address, the callsign is a convenience — either it or the address signs you in. For a class-code student the callsign is the whole credential. There is nothing else.

The sign-up screen suggests callsigns if you cannot think of one, and every suggestion it offers is genuinely available — it will never propose a name and then refuse it at the end.

Badges

Instead of profile photos, accounts pick a badge: a drawing and a colour from a fixed set. There are no uploads. Most of the people using this are children, and a fixed catalogue is the only version of avatars that needs no moderation.

You can change your badge whenever you like.

Class codes

A class has an invite code — eight capital letters and digits, like SKYLARK7 — created with the class. It is how students join, and there is nothing else to do: no accounts to create for them, no addresses to collect, no invitations to send.

Anyone with the code can join, and there is no approval step. Two things follow from that:

• The code cannot be changed. There is no way to rotate or retire it, so treat it as semi-public. If it leaks, remove whoever should not be there, or make a new class.
• Joining twice is harmless. The second attempt does nothing at all.

A student already in the class can never be locked out of their own place by the class being full — they are not asking for a new one.

Two limits on class size

Both are set by an administrator, and the error message tells you which one you hit:

• Your own limit — how many students one teacher may have, counted across all of their classes together. A student in two of your classes takes one place.
• The school’s seats — every student of every teacher at the school.

Going deeper

This page is the one-screen version. Two pages take it further:

• The three kinds of student account — for teachers: what you can and cannot do for each kind, and the whole forgotten-password procedure.
• Your class and its code — creating a class, the five tabs, removing students, and getting marks out.

If you are a student rather than a teacher, go to Joining your class with a code or Learning on your own instead.