District Questions & Answers

Practice Master is a supplemental practice platform for schools. Students work through short, focused practice sessions in a subject a teacher has opened for them — spelling, vocabulary, geography, maths, grammar, reading, animals and nature, or history and civics.

Spelling Bee Master is the first practice area and remains a complete spelling-bee preparation and competition simulation in its own right. The other practice areas sit alongside it under the same district workspace, the same accounts and the same rules.

No. It is deliberately supplemental. There is no pacing guide, no grade book of record, and no claim to cover a state's full course of study. It gives students structured repeated practice on skills a teacher has already taught.

Sessions are built around 5, 10, 15 and 20 minutes. Twenty minutes per subject per day is the intended maximum, not a target.

Spelling, Vocabulary, Geography, Maths Practice, Grammar & Language, Reading Comprehension, Animals & Nature, and History & Civics.

Practice areas are released independently. Your district only sees a practice area once it has been released and your district holds it through a trial, a licence or complimentary access.

Spelling Bee Master is practice area number one and the base licence. Everything that already worked there — weekly lists, class codes, committed-letter entry, mock bee, study mode, coach diagnostics, celebration screen — is unchanged.

Yes. A student needs the class code their teacher gives them and a browser. Nothing is installed and no student account is created.

No. Practice Master runs in the browser. It can be added to a phone or tablet home screen if you want a shortcut icon, but there is no app-store download and no browser extension.

Districts and schools. Teachers assign and review, students practise, a district administrator runs setup, and Ark & Ember LLC operates the platform. There is no consumer sign-up for individual families.

Yes — a 30-day district trial. You request it yourself from the district request page; no phone call and no sales appointment are required.

Thirty days. The clock starts when your institutional sbmaster@ mailbox confirms itself — not when you submit the form — so you never lose days to email verification.

Every practice area that has been released, for the whole district: unlimited teachers, unlimited classes, unlimited student practice, teacher review and assignment tools, accessibility and reading options, and the district administration console.

Practice areas still in internal preview at Ark & Ember are not included, because they have not been released to any district.

No. No card, no payment method, and no automatic conversion to a paid plan. Public-school purchasing runs on purchase orders and invoices, so that is what Practice Master expects.

Student practice stops in practice areas your district does not hold. Everything else is kept: your district settings, branding, approved domains, administrator and teacher accounts, classes, word lists, practice sets, reporting history and audit records.

Your district administrator keeps administrative access so they can review the setup, choose practice areas and request licensing.

No. Trial expiry changes what students may practise. It does not delete district data, staff accounts, class history or audit records.

Spelling Bee Master is the base district licence at $599 per year for the whole district — unlimited teachers, classes and student practice. Additional major practice areas are $100 per practice area per year.

Pricing is configuration, not code: the amounts shown on the pricing page and on your district record are the amounts that apply to you.

Neither. Pricing is district-wide. Adding students, teachers or schools does not change the price.

Yes. A practice area can be activated mid-year with its own effective date, and your district keeps a single renewal date so everything renews together.

A district can be given a grace period so practice continues while the paperwork clears. If a district goes past its grace period, student practice pauses and administrative access remains, exactly as at trial expiry.

It is a shared institutional mailbox at one of your own verified district domains — for example sbmaster@yourdistrict.org — that administers your Practice Master workspace.

It is required so district stewardship never depends on one person's personal account. When a curriculum director changes job, the district keeps control of its workspace without any transfer request.

Any domain works; there is no required top-level domain. Your district creates and controls the mailbox.

Whoever owns supplemental instructional tools at your district — commonly a curriculum director, instructional technology lead, or a shared team distribution list.

We recommend a mail rule that accepts inbound mail on that mailbox only from @arkemberllc.com and your own district domains, and quarantines everything else. All platform mail comes from @arkemberllc.com, so the mailbox stays free of solicitation and phishing.

The institutional sbmaster mailbox is the district administrator account. Additional staff are added as teachers, and a district can have as many as it likes.

Several people can share the sbmaster mailbox through your own mail system, which is the usual way districts run this.

Because the administrator account is an institutional mailbox rather than a person, there is normally nothing to transfer — your district reassigns who reads that mailbox.

If the mailbox itself must change, email sbmaster@arkemberllc.com from a verified district address and Ark & Ember will update it with an audit record.

Yes. Many districts have both a staff domain and a student or legacy domain. Add each one in the district console; only verified emails on an approved domain can be given teacher access.

District legal name, the display name students see, your name, title and district email, your approved staff email domains, and optionally city, state, website and branding colours.

Yes. Add your colours and logo in the district console. Practice Master checks each colour for readable contrast and tells you when a colour cannot be used for a particular role, substituting an accessible neutral for that role only.

Setup is self-service and immediate: once the sbmaster mailbox confirms itself, the district console, domains, teacher import and practice areas are available straight away. The pace after that is your own.

Platform Admin — Ark & Ember LLC only. Operates the platform, reviews and releases content, manages district licensing.

District Site Administrator — your district's institutional sbmaster account. Runs district setup, staff, branding, sign-in policy and reporting for that one district.

Teacher — creates classes and class codes, builds or selects practice content, reviews and assigns it, sees class progress.

Student — practises. No account, no email, no password: a class code and a nickname.

Confirm district information and domains, add and import teachers, deactivate and reactivate staff, export a staff roster, set Google/Microsoft sign-in policy, add branding, review licensed practice areas, view district reporting, and open a read-only teacher support view within their own district.

Some accounts are authorised for more than one kind of view — for example a district administrator who also teaches. The switcher changes which view you are looking at; it never changes who you are or what you are authorised for. Every check is made on the server against your stored roles.

No. Every district's classes, lists, codes, students, reporting and staff are separated per district, and each request is checked against the district the signed-in account belongs to.

No. Matching an approved domain is necessary but never sufficient. A teacher must also be on the district staff list with a verified email address before any teacher tools appear.

In the district console staff list, enter the teacher's district email address and add them. They appear as invited until they sign in with that verified address, at which point they become active.

Yes. Paste a list of addresses (optionally with first name, last name and school) into the import box in the staff list. Addresses on domains your district has not approved are rejected and reported back rather than silently skipped.

Yes, individually or in bulk. Deactivating removes access; it does not erase the teacher's classes, lists or history. Reactivating restores access.

Yes — the staff list exports to a spreadsheet file with status and school, for your own records or for an audit request.

No. Students enter a class code and a nickname. There are no student emails and no student passwords.

Each class has a code that expires weekly, so every week starts fresh. A teacher can see or rotate the current code in their teacher tools.

Yes. In spelling they can practise this week's list, everything covered so far, or a sample drawn from all of it.

It proves who somebody is using your existing Google or Microsoft accounts, so staff do not need another password. That is authentication.

It does not decide what somebody may do. Authorisation comes from your district staff list and stored roles. A valid Google or Microsoft login by itself grants nothing beyond a signed-in account.

Google and Microsoft, plus ordinary email and password. Your district switches Google and Microsoft on or off for its own staff.

Not currently supported. Staff sign in with Google, Microsoft or email and password, and rostering is done by adding or importing staff addresses. Students do not need accounts at all.

Only if your district switches automatic approval on. It is off by default: a matching domain plus a verified email is not enough until the address is on your staff list.

Ark & Ember builds and reviews the shared content bank. Every item carries a source or provenance note and must be approved before it can reach students.

Yes. In spelling, teachers enter their own weekly word lists. In the other practice areas teachers select from the reviewed bank; teacher-authored items in those areas are not currently supported.

Before assigning practice, a teacher can see exactly what students will see, item by item, and mark the set reviewed. A practice set records how many items were reviewed and who verified it.

Yes. Content is grouped into named sets by topic and grade, and a teacher can take a whole set, filter it down, or select individual items.

Spelling word lists, yes. Importing other subject material from a district is not currently supported.

Every content item carries a version number, and each change keeps a snapshot of the previous version with who changed it and when. Approved content can be scheduled with an effective date, retired, or replaced by a successor item.

Yes. A teacher can report an issue on any item; Ark & Ember can put the item on hold or retire it, and the district can see it was addressed.

Either it has not been released yet, or your district does not hold it through a trial, licence or complimentary access. Your district administrator can see the current list in the district console.

It is built to support repeated practice rather than a one-off demonstration, and it grows in reviewed batches. Your district administrator can see the exact number of active items by subject and grade in the district console, so the answer is always a real count rather than a marketing figure.

Practice Master stores verified state standards exactly as published and maps reviewed content to them. Every mapping is reviewed by a person at Ark & Ember before it is treated as authoritative.

Coverage varies by state, grade, subject and practice area, and Practice Master does not claim alignment where a verified mapping has not been completed. Our internal coverage report lists every benchmark with no content, thin content or an unresolved source, so we can tell you exactly where we stand rather than claiming blanket alignment.

Where a benchmark's official wording could not be read cleanly from the source document, it is quarantined for source review and is never presented as a usable standard.

Where a standard has been loaded from a verified official source, yes. Where it has not, the item is shown as Standards Mapping Pending. Practice Master never invents a standard code or standard text.

Yes. Standards are a separate mapping layer, so a single content item can carry a Florida mapping and a Georgia mapping without duplicating the item.

No. Content is either national in scope or scoped to a state. State-scoped content is only shown to districts in that state.

The prior and current official standards are compared away from the student experience, the differences are reviewed by a person, mappings are updated, and the change is published for that state. Nothing publishes automatically.

No. AI may help compare two official standards documents in the back office, but a person approves every mapping and every content change before it reaches a student.

Practice Master is designed and tested toward WCAG 2.2 AA. We do not claim third-party certification.

Yes. Navigation, forms, teacher tools and the practice flow are operable from the keyboard with visible focus.

Controls are labelled and state is announced in words as well as shown visually. Spelling practice deliberately never exposes the target word before submission, including to assistive technology.

A dyslexia-friendly font, three text sizes, and enhanced letter, word and line spacing. These are personal preferences stored for the person or the device — never a district-wide setting and never a diagnosis.

Brand colours are checked for contrast before they are used. If a colour cannot meet the contrast target for a particular role, an accessible neutral is used for that role and the substitution is reported to your district.

Images carry alt text that describes what a sighted student sees without naming the answer, and decorative images are marked decorative so they are skipped entirely.

No and no. There is no advertising, no data brokerage and no sale or rental of any information to anyone.

A class nickname the student types and their practice attempts. No student email, no password, no name unless a teacher chooses to use one as the nickname.

No. Practice Master never requests the microphone or camera, and nothing a student says is captured or analysed. Words are read aloud to the student; nothing listens back.

No. Districts are separated, and access is checked on every request against the district the signed-in account belongs to.

Yes. A support view requires a stated reason, is read-only, expires on its own, and is recorded in a durable audit trail with who opened it, why, when and what area was viewed.

No. The ordinary student practice flow uses reviewed, stored content. No live generative model produces what a student sees, and nothing about a student is sent to a model during practice.

Only in the back office: drafting candidate content for human review, and comparing two official standards documents. A person reviews and approves before anything reaches a student.

Not currently supported, and not planned as part of ordinary practice. There is no student-facing chatbot, no AI tutor and no microphone analysis.

Through the district, yes. A district administrator or teacher can produce a transparency report of the active content for a subject and grade, including sources and any standards mappings, and share it. There is no separate parent login.

Yes. The transparency report is produced from the district console for a subject and grade, and can be saved or printed.

Yes. Items keep version snapshots, and each item records its source or provenance. Retired items keep the reason they were retired.

A read-only view of what a teacher sees, used to answer a support question without asking for a password or a screen share. It requires a stated reason, is limited in time, and is recorded.

It is read-only — nothing can be changed from it — and the teacher stays signed in and working. The teacher sees a banner while it is open and a notice afterwards.

No. Passwords are never visible to a district administrator or to Ark & Ember.

No. A district administrator's support view is limited to their own district.

Yes. Districts are invoiced for the annual licence and purchase orders are welcome. Send yours to sbmaster@arkemberllc.com.

Vendor documentation is available upon request from sbmaster@arkemberllc.com.

Not currently supported. Practice Master is invoiced to the district; there is no online card checkout.

Yes. Practice areas added mid-year take an effective date but keep your district's single renewal date.

The district console has a year-end preview that shows in plain English who would be affected before anything happens, then deactivates in bulk.

Yes to both. Deactivation removes access only. Classes, lists, reporting and audit records remain, and an account can be reactivated.

Yes. The year-end action works from a list you confirm, so year-round staff can be left out.

No. Audit records are kept and are not editable.

Current versions of Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, iOS and Android. Chromebooks are a primary target, and the interface works on phones and tablets.

Yes. Practice Master runs online; offline practice is not currently supported.

None of them. Words are read aloud using stored audio or the device's own speech voice, so devices only need working sound for spelling practice.

No. There is no app-store install and no software to deploy. Practice Master can be added to a home screen as a shortcut if you want an icon.

Check that you are using your district email address and that you have confirmed it from the email Practice Master sent. If your district uses Google or Microsoft sign-in, use that button rather than a password. If your address is not yet on the district staff list, an administrator must add it first.

The teacher must be on the district staff list with an active status, and must have verified their district email. Add or re-check them in the staff list, then have them sign out and back in.

Add the domain in the district console approved-domains list first. Addresses on unapproved domains are refused on purpose.

Confirm that provider is switched on for your district in the sign-in settings, and that the person is using an account on an approved district domain. If it still fails, email sbmaster@arkemberllc.com with the address and the time it happened.

Check the practice area is active for the district and its effective date has arrived, then have the teacher sign out and back in so their access is re-read.

Confirm the practice set is assigned to that class and that the student joined with that class's current code. Codes expire weekly.

Codes expire at the end of each week. Open teacher tools to see or rotate this week's code, and check the students are typing the current one.

Report the item from the teacher view. Ark & Ember can hold or retire an item immediately, and the correction is versioned.

Reading options are stored on the account when signed in and on the device otherwise. If a shared device clears its browser storage between students, sign in before setting the preference so it follows the account.

Student practice pauses in practice areas the district does not hold; your setup, staff and history are kept. Your administrator can select practice areas and request licensing from the district console, or email sbmaster@arkemberllc.com to extend the trial.

A reason is required, the teacher must be an active teacher in your own district, and a previous session must have ended. Sessions expire on their own after a period of inactivity.

The import reports each address it rejected and why — usually an unapproved domain or a malformed address. Fix those lines and paste them again; addresses that were accepted are not duplicated.

For anything unusual: verification that will not complete, a domain question, a licensing or complimentary-access request, a suspected content error, a security question, or purchasing paperwork. Routine setup does not need us.

Email sbmaster@arkemberllc.com from a district address and include your district name. Support is email-first and self-service by design; no call is required.