Prepare the lecture
Create a class in the “Lecture” format: by default, the teacher controls the notebook, code runs, files and the shared screen. Upload the slides as a PDF to the room's files, open it and press Lecture in the viewer. Anyone the “Put a document on the shared screen” rule allows onto the shared screen can start a lecture; only the teacher can end someone else's lecture.
A notebook with examples can stay open alongside. The format does not rule out practice: the teacher can open a single cell to the whole group or switch on Council.
Connect the projector
The Project button on the lecture bar opens the projection of this same room, /s/ID/screen, in a separate window: drag it to the projector screen, and the room stays available on your laptop. It is not a new room, just another view of the class. You can also open the projection address on another computer by signing in to the same room. Paging with ← / →, PageUp / PageDown or a presentation clicker at the projector works only if the projection is opened as the presenter; otherwise, page from the laptop or tablet. B or the “Pause” button blanks the projection, while the presenter's page stays.
The projection is made for a big screen. It shows only the lecture page with its annotations, or a sheet to write on. Until the lecture starts, the screen says: “The screen is ready. It will show the document when the teacher starts a lecture.” The notebook is never shown on the projection: to show a cell, show the room window to the audience. Check the browser zoom, full-screen mode (the F key on the projection) and the device's connection to the server beforehand.
When the presenter zooms in with the Magnifier, the projection shows exactly the same region as the console. The slide's edges on the screen stay where they are: the zoom moves smoothly inside them, and a moment after it stops the picture turns sharp.
The projection is hard to close by accident. F5, which the “slideshow” button of a presentation clicker sends, switches to full screen instead of reloading the page. To leave the projection, press Esc twice in a row: after the first press the bottom of the screen says “Esc again to close the projection”. Reloading the projection window during a lecture asks for confirmation first.
Connect a tablet
During the lecture, press Console on the lecture bar (tooltip: “Open console on a tablet”) and open the link you get on the tablet. The link is valid for 10 minutes and works once. It signs in to the room as you, so do not send it to students. The room's regular console address is /s/ID/pult, but on its own it does not grant teacher rights.
The console has a pen, highlighter, eraser, pointer and magnifier, and you can add a sheet after any slide for a formula or a diagram. The group sees your handwritten annotations, while speaker notes are seen by teachers only.
A second tap on Pen opens its palette. It has eight colours: black, red, blue, green, orange, purple, yellow and white, the last two for dark slides. With a keyboard on the tablet, keys 1–8 pick the colour. The five widths in the palette are drawn at their real size, exactly as the line will land on the slide. A second tap on Highlighter opens the highlighter palette: five colours (yellow, green, blue, pink and orange) and three widths. The highlighter lies under the ink, so the slide's text and your pen lines do not fade under it: black stays black.
An underline, an axis or a fraction bar is easy to draw straight: hold the pen or highlighter still at the end of the stroke for about half a second, and the stroke straightens into a segment from its start to where the pen rests. Until you lift the pen you can still move the end, and a single undo removes the whole line. An arc, a bracket or a letter does not straighten when the pen rests. A rectangle round a formula squares up the same way: close it and hold the pen, and it becomes a neat frame with a see-through inside whose nearest corner you can drag until you lift the pen. A circle or a triangle stays as drawn.
The pointer is red, and the projector and the students see it too. A second tap on Pointer offers two kinds: Line, to trace and write, and Dot, to point at a spot without a trace. A word written with the pointer stays lit while you keep writing and goes out as a whole 1.5 seconds after your last touch: all its strokes fade together over 0.6 seconds.
The Notes key on the console rail opens the notes for the current slide. In landscape they stand as a column on the right; the slide gets smaller and stays available to the pen. In portrait the notes lie under the slide, and the border between them can be dragged with a finger or moved with the arrow keys; a double tap puts it back. Under the slide you see the page number, the lecture time, “planned” if the slides have timings, and a strip of slides and sheets that marks what comes next. Prompter (the T key, a button in the notes panel or a row in the “⋯” menu) hides the slide and the pen and leaves only the text in large type, 22 to 40 px. A thumbnail of the slide, the time spent on it and what comes next stay alongside. The “Slide” key brings the usual view back. The console remembers the type size and the chosen view on this device.
Zoom in on a detail
To show a small detail or look closer at a picture, spread two fingers on the console's sheet: the slide zooms in around the point between them, and moving two fingers together pans the zoomed slide. The other way is the Magnifier key on the rail: press it and draw a frame with the pen. The frame fills the sheet and the previous tool comes back, so you can write on the zoomed detail at once. A tap without a frame brings the slide twice as close around that point. A finger can draw the frame only until the console notices the pen: at that point the console says “Finger drawing is off: pen in use”, and from then on only the pen draws the frame on this device. The “Draw with your finger” row in the “⋯” menu turns finger drawing back on. You can zoom in up to ×4. With a keyboard on the tablet, + and - zoom in and out, and 0 shows the whole slide.
While the slide is zoomed, the Magnifier key shows how close, for example “×2.5”, with “Whole slide” under it: a tap brings back the whole slide. Turning the page also opens the next page whole. The projector and the students who follow the lecture see the same region as you do. Annotations zoom with the slide, and a new stroke under the magnifier looks as thick on screen as it does without it, so on the whole slide it is finer, in scale with the detail.
Pinching is for fingers only: the pen takes no part in it, and a palm resting on the glass is not a gesture. Put both fingers down together: if the second one lands noticeably later than the first, or the pen is near the glass, or a palm rests on it, the slide does not zoom. A short two-finger tap does not zoom; it undoes the last stroke.
Sheets between slides
When the slide is over but the derivation is not, press + Sheet on the console rail: a blank sheet goes right after the current page, whether that is a slide or another sheet, and the projection moves to it. The ‹ and › Next keys walk slides and sheets as one chain. The arrow keys and a presentation clicker at the projector or the laptop walk the same chain but never start a new sheet. A lecture can have up to 50 sheets; at 50 the console asks you to delete one you no longer need instead of adding another.
The strip under the console's sheet shows slides and sheets in order and counts them: “Strip · 50 slides · 3 sheets”. In portrait the strip runs above the bottom rail. Tapping a thumbnail takes the lecture to that page, and the dashed “+” tile right after the current page does the same as + Sheet. Tapping the page number opens Pages, the same chain as a large grid. On a sheet, the page number reads “S2” with the caption “sheet 2 of 3 · after slide 14”. Sheets have no notes.
Tapping the current sheet in the strip or in Pages opens the sheet's menu. Under Paper, pick Plain, Grid, Lined or Dots, and the hall sees the sheet on the same paper. Delete sheet asks for confirmation first and says how many strokes go with the sheet. If the hall was looking at that sheet, the projection moves to the previous page in the chain.
Speaker notes
Notes are written for each page of a PDF and saved with the document. Only the room's teachers see them. The hall, the students and the projection never receive them, and they do not go onto the class page. Open the document and press Notes in the viewer bar. No lecture has to be running, so you can prepare the evening before. The editor opens over the room. On the left is the list of slides with the first line of each note and a “no notes” filter. In the middle are the current slide, a time estimate and the text field. On the right, As on the console shows the note as it will look on the tablet at 18, 22 or 28 px, and whether it fits one screen. On a narrow screen this preview is a tab next to the text.
The text saves by itself a moment after you pause. The bottom line shows “Saved · HH:MM” and a counter up to 3,000 characters. Offline, the editor says “Offline — will save when it is back”. A note longer than 3,000 characters is not saved, and it is not cut either: the text stays in the field and the counter stays red until you shorten it, and closing the editor with such a text takes a second press. ⌘ / Ctrl + ↑ / ↓ opens the neighbouring slide, and Esc closes the editor. During a lecture the Notes button is on the lecture bar too, and a presentation clicker's PageUp / PageDown keep turning slides even while the caret is in a note.
A note is Markdown, and the buttons above the field insert the markup. Bold marks the line the slide exists for. A line in italics is a cue for yourself and is dimmed on the console. Lists, quotes and formulas in $…$ work too. A line like *≈ 1.2 min* sets the time for the slide: the console shows it in the note's header and counts “planned” from it. A paragraph that starts with **If asked:** is an answer in reserve: on the console it is folded to the question and opens with a tap. Links and images show as plain text on the console, so a stray tap cannot take you out of the lecture.
A whole script can be loaded at once. Import script (.md) takes a file up to 1 MB, a drop or text from the clipboard. Each section with a ## 14 · Title heading becomes the note for page 14. Headings like “## Slide 14”, “## Слайд 14: …” and “## 14) …” work too; sections without a number follow in order. Before anything is written you see which sections are new, which replace a note, which match it, and which will be skipped: over 3,000 characters, no such slide, empty or repeated. An empty section never deletes a note. Everything is written in one go, or nothing is. Download .md saves the notes in the same format, with slide titles from the PDF, and such a file loads back unchanged. Notes are tied to the file name and the page number: if you replace the PDF with one where slides moved, the notes stay on the old page numbers.
Taking over a lecture
One person presents a lecture: whoever started it. The same teacher in a second browser and a second teacher in the room see above the slide who is presenting and from where, for example “Ada is presenting — from another device (iPad, console)”, together with whether the presenter is online, when they last did something and which page they are on. In the people list your second browser reads “You · another device”. Watch as the hall folds this bar, and the Notes button next to it opens the notes for the slide.
Take over the lecture moves control here. The page, the sheets, the zoom, the handwritten annotations and the lecture clock stay, and the line the previous presenter was drawing stays with the hall. If the hall was looking at a zoomed slide, the presenter's bar on the laptop shows a key with the zoom, for example “×2.5”: it gives the hall the whole slide back, and so does the 0 key. If a colleague is presenting and is online, press the button a second time. Your own lecture on another device, or a presenter who has been offline for more than 5 seconds (a closed laptop, a dead tablet), is taken over with one press and no waiting. The previous presenter sees “The lecture was taken over” and can Take it back or Watch. On a tablet console that is not presenting, the turn keys are replaced by who is presenting, and the “Take control” key (“Present from here” when it is you) takes the console.
A take-over needs a connection to the server: offline the button is disabled, and a press is never queued until the connection returns. If the lecture has ended by then, or someone else has taken it over in the meantime, the server refuses and says why. The Lecture button on a document another teacher is already presenting does not take the lecture over; it points you to Take over the lecture. Only teachers can take over a lecture.
How students follow the lecture
Students see the slides and annotations in their own browser. While a student follows the lecture, they see what the projector shows: the same page or sheet, on the same paper, at the same zoom. Read on my own lets them go: they can leave the current page, go back to an earlier one and finish reading, and the presenter's magnifier does not move their view. To lecture brings them back to the presenter's page. The “Put a document on the shared screen” rule controls the shared screen; it does not stop anyone from viewing documents on their own.
Materials after the lecture
When the class ends, the room stays open for reading. Handwritten annotations, sheets with their paper and the zoom live only in server memory: the “End” button on the lecture bar, a server restart or a server update erases them for good. A server restart during a class also ends the lecture itself, and it has to be started again, so update the server between classes. Speaker notes are saved page by page for each document. The slides PDF is one of the room's files, so on the class page it is ticked from the start and opens for students in the browser's own viewer. Handwritten annotations and speaker notes do not go onto the page.
Before the next lecture, make sure the right room is open on every device. If the tablet has lost its rights, sign in with a new console link; do not share your admin sign-in link to restore access.