CLASSROOM COMPANION v4.0 — USER GUIDE
© 2026 Mitchell Papish
Windows classroom companion • English / Simplified Chinese • Offline records

1. INSTALL OR RUN PORTABLY

Quit the older app using its system-tray menu → Quit. Run ClassroomCompanion-v4.0-Setup.exe, or extract ClassroomCompanion-v4.0-Portable.zip into a normal folder and open ClassroomCompanion.exe. Do not run the executable inside the ZIP. Keep the languages folder beside it. The installer is per-user and does not require PowerPoint.

Target: Windows 11 with .NET Framework 4.8. No account or internet connection is needed for classroom tools. Packages are unsigned; school deployment policy may require IT assistance. Current Windows releases are retained separately.

The default data folder is %LOCALAPPDATA%\ClassroomCompanion. v4.0 retains v3.x records and adds preferences to the same storage format. Export a complete backup before changing releases. Earlier v1/v2 records receive a before-v3-migration recovery archive when upgraded. Never run two releases against the same data folder at once.

New data folders contain synthetic demo students. Replace them with your own classes before teaching.

2. TOOLBAR AND DISPLAYS

The toolbar remains above ordinary applications. Use your teaching materials normally in PowerPoint, a browser, PDF reader or video player. Drag the dotted grip to move the toolbar. Release near an edge to snap; left/right edges rotate it vertically, top/bottom horizontally. The release pointer now counts toward snapping, fixing right-edge drops where the bar extends past the screen. You can position it anywhere along an edge.

The toolbar fades to 25% opacity after two idle seconds. Hover to reveal; click to activate. With touch, the first tap reveals and the second activates. “−” collapses it. “×” hides only the toolbar. Restore it from the tray or Ctrl+Alt+0. Appearance settings control opacity, size, edge hiding, icons-only mode and tool ordering. The new Hide class button is always available, including when collapsed.

HIDE CLASS hides student-facing windows, clears queued point notifications and stops points audio. A running timer pauses and its media stops playing. An in-progress picker closes; its already-recorded draw remains in history. Groups, totals, seating displays and whiteboards hide without deleting saved records. Open the corresponding tool to resume or show it again. A hidden whiteboard keeps unsaved work in memory; explicitly save it before quitting. Hiding is different from the toolbar “×” button.

Settings → General selects teacher and student displays. “Automatically use a second display when connected” defaults on. If the student display is the teacher display or unavailable, connecting another display selects a non-teacher display automatically. A valid separate student-display choice is preserved. Turn automatic selection off to deliberately keep both views on one display.

On display connection, visible activities move to the selected classroom display where possible. Private teacher panels hide and must be explicitly reopened. On disconnection or uncertain display recovery, activities hide; timers pause. Mirroring cannot provide privacy: both displays show the same content. Check the shared-screen indicator before opening private records. Exclusive fullscreen or protected applications may cover overlays; windowed/borderless mode can help.

Shortcuts: Ctrl+Alt+1 picker; 2 timer; 3 whiteboard; 4 groups; 5 points; 6 seating. Another application may reserve these shortcuts; the tray remains available.

3. CLASSES, IMPORT AND ATTENDANCE

Open Classes to add/select classes and students. Import pasted names, plain text, CSV or Excel (.xlsx); the first worksheet's first column supplies Excel names. Preview and review warnings before committing. The old example-specific No Hands import is not included. Timetables support weekly lessons and A/B weeks; set the week-A Monday in General. The suggested class never prevents manual selection.

Mark absences before selecting or grouping. Absent students stay in saved groups/seating but are excluded from student draws, new group generation and group-award recipients. Groups with no present members cannot be drawn.

4. PICKER

Click Pick to run immediately using saved preferences. The adjacent arrow opens teacher controls: Students/Groups, wheel or flickering names, everyone-gets-a-turn or independent random draws, sound and automatic hiding. Group mode uses current active groups.

Flickering names stop after about 0.5 seconds; wheel spins are longer. Wheel labels follow their slices and scale for long names. The full winner appears below. Very large rosters can make wheel labels small. Duplicate launches during a draw are ignored.

“Everyone gets a turn” saves progress across days and restarts. Student and group rounds are independent per class. After all eligible entries have been picked, the next draw begins a fresh round. Membership/attendance changes restart affected rounds, but the dated draw log remains. Random draws are logged too. History in the teacher menu shows recent draws. “Clear picker history & start again” clears the selected class/mode after confirmation; other classes/modes remain unchanged.

Picker sound options include synthesized Applause, Bell, Chime, System chime and a custom audio file. Enable Sound, choose a sound, preview and adjust volume. Custom audio is copied into assets and included in complete backups. Windows codecs determine playback support; WAV is the most reliable.

5. AUTOMATIC HIDING — NEW IN v4.0

Picker, Timer and Groups each have an independent delay. Enter a whole number from 0 to 3600 seconds and click Save. 0 turns automatic hiding off (the default). Look in each teacher tool's Automatically hide section, or Settings → Activities.

Picker delay starts when the winner is revealed, not when the animation begins. Group delay starts when the group display opens. Timer delay starts only after the countdown finishes; it never hides a still-running countdown. After the delay, the activity fades briefly and hides. Settings and editing controls stay teacher-side. Hiding stops activity audio. Starting a new draw or resetting/restarting a timer cancels its old hide countdown.

6. TIMERS

Click Timer, then a preset (1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes) or a custom duration. It appears and starts immediately. Reopen teacher controls to pause/resume, reset or dismiss. Replacing a running timer asks for confirmation.

Appearance and audio controls are teacher-side: corner/popup/fullscreen, Ocean/Forest/Night Sky scenes, background image/video, separate music and ending alarm. Video sound has its own switch and volume. Soft offline music and Bell/Chime/Pulse alarms are included. Choose custom background, music and alarm independently. Mute silences timer audio. Switching display mode preserves remaining time. Timers use a deadline so sleep or delayed UI updates do not simply add time.

Choosing a built-in theme clears a custom visual background. Media files are copied into assets. Local codec availability varies. Hide class pauses the timer; reopening Timer controls lets you resume. After an automatic end-of-countdown hide, start another duration normally.

7. POINTS

Points uses compact student cards. Adjust Card size or click Fit class; maximize the teacher window for larger rosters. Very large classes may still require scrolling at minimum size. Expand active group activity scores to see group cards and member names.

Choose award amount/category and use +/−. A group award updates its activity score once and each present member's personal total. Recipients and names are snapshotted at award time, so regrouping never rewrites history. Loading a group preset starts a fresh group activity score.

Settings → Activities controls classroom notifications, notification duration, and points Sound. When Sound is enabled, choose independent sounds for adding and taking points: Chime, Bell, Short buzzer or None. Defaults are Chime for awards and Short buzzer for deductions. Existing sound-off preferences stay off. Preview the two sounds and adjust Points sound volume, then Save settings. Sounds also work with visual point notifications disabled. Rapid visual notifications queue without taking focus. Undo cancels queued notices or sends a correction using the reversed sign's sound.

Show student totals / Show group scores opens a student-facing summary. Attributes and detailed history stay teacher-side. Undo reverses the last award/reset. Reset totals preserves history. Clear history defaults to this class and KEEP TOTALS; you can select all classes or clear totals too. A complete before-history-clear-….ccbackup is saved first. Clear history is not reversed by ordinary award Undo; restore the backup if needed. Retained totals become opening balances.

8. GROUPS, RULES AND SKILLS

Generate by group count or target size. Group cards show student chips, counts and absences. Drag students or use Move to group. Rename groups inline. Lock assigned students with their padlocks before reshuffling. Unlock before moving them. Manual rule conflicts require explicit override; size imbalances are shown without preventing deliberate arrangements.

Select students in the searchable rule editor, then Keep together or Keep apart. Together means all selected students share one group; apart means every selected pair is separated. Readable rule chips can be edited/removed. Contradictions and impossible constraints are explained before generation.

Skills has class-wide rating/category columns, bulk assignment and rectangular paste from Excel. New ratings default to 1–5; missing values stay unrated. Select multiple grouping fields with Mixed levels/categories or Similar levels/categories. Mixed numeric grouping seeks similar group averages; Similar seeks similar members within each group. Category objectives spread or cluster categories. Selected fields have equal normalized weight; missing data contributes no attribute score. Attendance, balanced sizes, rules and locks remain hard constraints.

Active groups persist between sessions. Save named presets; loading copies the preset into active groups. Later active edits do not silently overwrite the preset. Removed students are flagged on preset loading. Clear groups preserves presets, seating and point history, with immediate undo. Colors are automatic; change palettes in Settings → Appearance → Group colors. Show to class opens the public group display.

9. SEATING

Seating opens privately on the teacher display. Create tables, circles, U shapes or traditional rows. Four rows of five makes twenty individual desks facing the board. Use spacing/aisles, Zoom, Fit room, Center layout and furniture Size. Drag dotted grips to move furniture. Drag names to swap seats; right-click a seat to assign/clear it. Furniture options adjust type, seat count and rotation.

Save named favorites as reusable empty layouts or class-specific plans. Load/Rename/Delete/Save as are available. Loaded favorites are independent until explicitly saved. Unsaved replacement warns; removed students leave empty seats. Show to class publishes a read-only snapshot; later edits require Update display. Hide class hides that public snapshot without deleting the saved plan.

10. WHITEBOARD

Open a blank board or capture-and-annotate a chosen display. Capture hides companion controls first; protected capture can fail, in which case use a blank board. Pen, highlighter, eraser, text, undo/redo, PNG export and editable saved boards are available. Controls remain teacher-side while drawing occurs on the classroom canvas. Save before quitting. Live transparent drawing is not included.

11. BACKUP AND RECOVERY

Settings → Backup exports records, presets, points, picker history/progress, preferences, boards and assets into one versioned .ccbackup file. Import validates and previews the backup before replacement, with a recovery backup of existing data. Imported records replace the workspace rather than merge. Keep copies outside the computer as needed; no cloud synchronization is provided.

An optional writable data folder can be selected with --data "D:\MyClassroomData", or data-location.txt beside the executable. Quit before changing locations. Portable program files do not automatically imply portable data; the default remains per-user storage.

12. ABOUT AND TESTING LIMITS

Settings → About shows Book & Spark, v4.0 and © 2026 Mitchell Papish. The About page includes the supplied creator biography. The logo is embedded in the program, normal windows, taskbar, tray and installer/shortcut icon. Windows may cache an older shortcut icon; recreate the shortcut from the new installation if necessary.

Automated checks use synthetic data and cover both languages, persistence and the main classroom workflows. Real projector/mixed-scaling, touch/pen, speaker/custom-codec and clean-machine install/uninstall checks still need classroom hardware. Mac, cloud sync and commercial licensing/payment features are not part of this release.

PICKER REFINEMENTS — UPDATED v4.0

The small Students / Groups button beside Pick shows the active mode. Click it once to switch modes, then click Pick to draw immediately. The separate arrow still opens full picker settings. Mode changes are ignored while a draw is pending/running, preserving its result. Student and group no-repeat rounds remain separate.

When teacher and student displays are separate, a four-second result popup appears on the teacher display at reveal time. It shows the selected name or group and present members, without taking keyboard focus. It is automatically suppressed on single or mirrored displays. It remains a private teacher window and hides during display recovery.

Each present student's points card has a small ◎ button: Pick this student. It opens the normal picker using the saved wheel/flicker setting, selects Students mode, and makes that student the winner. The classroom display uses the usual animation and result presentation. Absent students cannot be chosen. This deliberate selection overrides the random/no-repeat choice, marks the student as used in the current round, and is labeled Teacher selected in private history. Choosing an already-used student may deliberately repeat them; other used entries remain used. A fully completed round starts fresh as usual. The action does not change points. Duplicate launches during a draw are ignored.

ABOUT THE CREATOR
Mitchell is a classroom teacher of 20+ years and a lifetime learner. Most recently he's become a dabbler in AI-assisted coding to create useful tools to help educators to work smarter, not harder.