Send a message to the Trace team#
Help sits in the sidebar footer on every signed-in page, directly above
your account link. On a laptop a round button in the bottom-right corner opens
the same panel, and /help is the full-page version of it.
Inside it are three guides chosen for your role, a link to All guides and documentation, Your messages holding everything you have already sent, and Send a message.
Writing a message takes a category, a Title, and the message itself. The four categories are A question, Something is broken, An idea, and Feedback, and each one changes the prompt above the box. Choosing Something is broken asks "What did you do, what happened, and what did you expect instead?" The page you were on when you pressed Help is sent along automatically, so you do not need to describe where you were.
A person on the Trace team reads it and replies in the same thread and by email. Your message shows a status: Waiting for Trace, Trace replied, Resolved, or Closed. Replying to a resolved or closed message reopens it. Trace's commitment is a reply within two business days, and during the first two weeks of a pilot the aim is the same day. There is a limit of five new messages and twenty replies every ten minutes, and hitting it says so rather than failing silently.
Print the substitute kit before you are out#
Each unit covered by a chapter's teacher guide has a substitute kit, written so somebody with no Trace account and no background in the subject can run the period without devices.
Open Resources in the sidebar, choose the chapter, and go to the Decks and sub-kits tab. Under Unit resources, each unit row carries Teacher kit and Student kit buttons, which download the two packets as Markdown files you can print. The same row's Save to My files menu offers Teacher kit as editable note and Student kit as editable note, which put an editable copy in your Notes folder so you can adjust the facilitation notes or cut a question before printing.
The student packet holds a reading of about a page set in a fictional scenario, four discussion questions, and a worksheet drawn from the chapter's question bank, with no answers anywhere in it. The teacher packet holds all of that plus answer sketches for the discussion questions, facilitation notes on how to run the period, and support for marking the worksheet.
Print the student packet once per student and the teacher packet once. Hand both to the substitute with a note saying which unit you are on. The companion one-page sheet for the substitute themselves covers the rest.
Common questions#
A student cannot join with the code. Check the code has not been changed in Class settings or by a removal, since removing a student issues a new code as a side effect. Ask the student to type it again in capitals. An archived class admits nobody with its code, which Class settings says. Then send us a message from Help and include the student's username.
A student under 13 cannot sign up. They must choose "Student joining a classroom" on the sign-up page and enter your class code there. Without a class code, Trace blocks the account.
A student signed up with the wrong role. A role cannot be changed from inside the app, so a student who picked "Teacher or educator" by mistake will not be able to join your class. Send us a message from Help with their username and what the account should be.
An assignment does not show up for students. Open the class Assignments section and look at the badge on its card. Scheduled means students cannot see it at all until the publish moment, and no notification has gone out yet. To release it now, open Edit assignment, choose Publish now, and press Save changes. Closed means they can read it but cannot turn anything in. If the badge says Open, check the student is on your roster rather than under "Invited, not signed in yet" on the Students section.
A lab will not let a student save. Every lab ends with a reflection box, and Save my run stays disabled until the student writes something in it. Most labs also need the lab's own goal reached first. If the button is there but the page says to add the subject to their library, the student reached the lab by browsing rather than through the assignment. Send them back through the assignment on their Home page, which enrolls them on the way in.
The class list is wrong after a schedule change. Add the new students with the current join code or Invite by email, and remove the ones who left from the row menu on the Students section. A removed student keeps the work they did, and they can rejoin later with the class code. Removing somebody issues a new join code, so tell anyone still joining to use the one on the class header rather than an older printout, and print a fresh sheet with Print code.
A student has run out of AI credits. Their row on the Students section shows an Out badge. Use Grant credits from that row's menu, or tick several rows and grant to all of them at once. This applies to school classes.
What this page does not do#
- The help panel is not live chat. Somebody checks the queue at the start and end of each school day, and the commitment is a reply within two business days.
- Trace offers no phone line and no out-of-hours channel. A safety flag marked Check on this student is for your school's own safeguarding process to act on.
- The substitute kit assumes nobody signs in. It gives a substitute no view of your class, your roster, or anyone's work, and the printed packets are the whole of what they get.
- Trace does not assign a grade, so nothing in a substitute kit or a support reply produces a score for you.