Running your classes in the River Tech portal

Part 1 · Your account

Teachers do not sign themselves up. An administrator invites you, and the invitation is the only way in — so the first five minutes are worth reading rather than guessing at.

1. The invitation lands in your inbox

   An administrator opens 👥 Staff & Parents in the portal and presses ✉️ Invite Teacher. They type your email address and, optionally, your name. You get an email with a link.

   That link works once, and it expires. Three things burn it: clicking it twice, waiting too long, and — the one nobody expects — an email security scanner that quietly opens every link in a message before you ever see it. If you land on "⚠️ This link is no longer valid", nothing is wrong with you or your account. Ask the office to send a fresh one.

   Open it on the computer you actually intend to work on, and do not forward it. The sign-in it creates lives in whichever browser opened it.

2. Set a password

   The link confirms your address — "✅ Email Confirmed!" — and then sends you straight to a box headed Complete Your Registration.

   rivertech.me/index.html?setup_password=true

   Complete Your Registration✕

   Welcome, Rosa!

   Your account has been created. Please set a password to complete your registration.

   Password

   Enter your password (min 8 characters)

   Confirm Password

   Confirm your password

   Set Password & Continue

   Example only — the name here is invented.

   At least 8 characters. Every screen that can ask you to set a password asks for the same thing — this one, Change Password, and the reset link — so you only decide once.

   Press Set Password & Continue and you land in the portal, signed in. From then on you sign in at rivertech.me with that address and password like anyone else.

3. Fix your name before you do anything else

   This is the one piece of housekeeping worth doing on day one, because the portal has given you a placeholder and pupils will see it.

   Go to 👤 Profile. Under 📋 Personal Information you will find something teachers get and nobody else does: your name is editable.

   rivertech.me/portal/#profile

   📋 Personal Information

   Your name

   Rosa

   Alder

   What students see

   rosa.alder.m1x2k9

   This is the name on your classes, messages and assignments. It has to be different from everyone else's.

   Save name

   Example only. That machine-shaped value in What students see is what the invitation generated — change it to Mrs. Alder, or whatever your pupils call you, and press Save name.

   • It must be different from everyone else's. If it is taken you get "… is already taken by someone else. Try another."
   • It cannot be blank — "Students need something to call you".
   • Success looks like a small "Name updated" message.
   If the administrator left the name fields blank when inviting you, your account is currently called New Teacher and the welcome box greeted you as "Welcome, New!". Same fix, same screen.

4. What your first day looks like

   Empty, and that is correct — there is no setup wizard and nothing is wrong. Your portal home has three cards and every number on it reads zero until you build a class.

   On a day you are on the duty rota, a 🧭 You're on duty today card sits above them — the time, the duty and position, the cohort and who you are on with. Tap it for the whole rota. On a day with no duty there is no card at all, rather than one saying so.

   rivertech.me/portal/

   🎯 Quick Actions

   📋 Take Daily Attendance 🚗 Pickup 🚨 Emergency drill 🧭 Staff Duties ➕ Create New Class 📋 Manage Rubrics 📁 Setup Google Drive 📦 Materials 🏢 Book a Room 🏆 My Teams 📖 Guide

   📊 Teaching Overview

   0Active Classes
   Currently teaching

   0Total Students
   Across all classes

   0Coaching
   Activities you coach

   0Unread Messages
   New notifications

   A brand new teacher account. Start at ➕ Create New Class.

   A third card, 📚 Math Tutor Activity, is marked BETA and stays quiet until pupils start using the tutor.

   Below all of it sits 🧭 More — the sections you need now and then rather than daily, kept out of the nav bar so the bar stays readable.

If the link doesn't work

Part 2 · Teaching

The daily loop: a class, work set in it, a register taken, and marks entered.

Building a class

➕ Create New Class, from your home screen or the Classes tab. The form is longer than it looks because two of its answers are awkward to change later.

Closing a class at the end of the year is 🔒 Close Class. Pupils and parents keep their grades and history; nothing new can be added.

Deleting a class is different, and it is the 🗑️ on the class card. It takes every assignment, submission, grade, enrolment and attendance record with it, so it lists what goes and then makes you type DELETE. If you only want it out of the way, close it — or hide it (below).

Your week

The Classes tab lays your timetable out like a calendar's week view: the days you teach across the top, starting Monday, and the bell periods down the side, named the way the office named them. Today's column is tinted and marked Today. On a phone it scrolls sideways.

Example only — invented classes and times.

• Attendance outlines. A class gets a green outline and Attendance taken once this week's register for it is saved, and a red one with Attendance not taken once the period has ended without one. Before the period ends it shows neither. They reset every Monday.
• ＋ Add class in an empty period opens Create Class with that day and period already filled in.
• Lunch and breaks show as thin bands between the periods.
• Today / Week switches between today's classes and the whole week. It starts on Week, and remembers your choice on each device.
• 🙈 Hide on a class card takes that class out of your view for that one day — a class that meets Monday and Thursday can be hidden on Thursday only. Show hidden appears while anything is hidden and brings them back dimmed. Hiding follows you to every device you sign in on, and changes nothing for pupils or anyone else.

Setting work

Open the class → 📝 Assignments. Everything to do with grading lives on that screen too, deliberately: 📋 Gradebook, 📊 Manage Grades and ➕ Create New Assignment are along the top.

The four types, chosen first because they change the rest of the form:

Then the fields that catch people out:

• Publish immediately is ticked by default. Untick it to draft.
• Graded Offline / In-Person — for tests, presentations and anything done in the room. Pupils see "Offline Assignment" and are not asked to upload anything; you enter the mark yourself.
• Assign to specific students only — everyone is pre-ticked, so untick rather than tick. Only the pupils you leave ticked will see it.
• Due Date must fall inside the quarter, and the form will tell you the window and refuse dates outside it.

Deleting an assignment nobody has handed in is one confirmation. Once there are submissions it names how many will go and makes you type DELETE, because handed-in work is the thing that cannot be got back.

Taking the register

There are two registers and they do different jobs.

The daily register

📋 Take Daily Attendance on your home screen. Everyone scheduled that weekday, with five statuses:

P Present · A Absent · L Late · E Left Early · and Late & Left Early.

• Choosing Late or Left Early asks which period they arrived or left.
• Choosing Absent reveals an Excused tick and a note field.
• Every change saves by itself, immediately. The row tells you — Saving…, then Saved. The Save Attendance button is only a retry for rows that did not go through; with nothing pending it says "Everything is already saved."
• It refreshes every twenty seconds, so two people can take it at once without overwriting each other.

The class register

Open the class → 📋 Class Attendance. Two buttons per pupil, ✅ and ❌, with Late / Left Early / both behind ⋯ Other. Tapping the mark a pupil already has clears it.

Under each name is a grey chip showing what the day says — Day: ⏰ Late · arrived P3, left P6. It is information, not a button.

📋 Match Master copies the day's register onto this lesson, translated to the period on screen: before they arrived is absent, the period they arrived is late, in between is present, the period they left is left-early, after is absent. A pupil with nothing recorded on the day is left alone rather than defaulted to present. Press Save Attendance afterwards to keep it.

🚫 Cancel Class marks the lesson cancelled for that date, with an optional reason, and removes the attendance for that session. ↩️ Restore Class undoes it.

Marking

Three ways, for three different situations.

📋 Gradebook — everything at once

Every pupil down the side, every assignment across the top, one box each. Type, tab, type. Changed boxes get a coloured border and the footer counts ⚠️ N unsaved changes until you press Save Changes.

Example only — invented names and marks.

• An excused cell shows EX and has no box. You cannot un-excuse from here — that is 📋 View Submissions → ✏️ Edit Status.
• Drafts have a column too, headed with a DRAFT badge. You can mark an assignment before you publish it; pupils see nothing until you do.
• Clicking a pupil's Academic cell opens the breakdown — trend 60%, recent five 40%, and the spread of A–F.

📝 One submission at a time

📋 View Submissions on an assignment. Filter by All / Submitted / Not Submitted / Graded / Excused, then 📝 Grade a pupil. You get their work, a rubric or a points box, and a Feedback field — which is the bit pupils actually read.

On a pupil who handed in nothing you also get ✋ Excuse and 📧 Remind.

📊 Manage Grades — the quarter grade

One row per pupil: Academic Avg, Participation, Suggested, Final Grade and Notes. Academic is calculated but you can override it, Participation is yours to set, and Use This accepts the suggestion as the final grade. ↺ system puts an overridden Academic back to the calculated one.

My Students

Everyone in your classes, in one place, with two tabs: Directory and Notes.

📋 View Details on a pupil opens the Student Hub — the same screen the office uses, so there is one place a child's record lives. Their grade and GPA are in the header, and the tabs are:

📚 Classes · ✏️ Profile · 📁 Records (contact info, emergency contacts, medical info) · 📅 Attendance · 📝 Notes · ⚠️ Strikes · 👪 Family · 💰 RTC · 🌳 Skill Trees · 📈 Weekly Activity · 📜 Activity Log

A pupil's name, grade and enrolment type are greyed out for you, and the office's 🔑 Account tab — sign-ins, invitations, PINs — is not shown to teachers.

Three kinds of note, and only one is private

A record note takes a sentiment (positive, negative, neutral), a category, an optional point value, and the note itself. The value has to agree with the sentiment — positive points for a positive note.

Riven, the assistant

The circle in the bottom-right corner of the portal. It is for teachers and admins only, which is why pupils and parents never mention it. Press it and ask for things in plain English.

The build number in the header is how you tell whether you have the latest version.

Things it genuinely understands, in roughly these words:

• "Give Rosalind 50 RTC for great work" · "+5 gold to Ari"
• "Who was absent yesterday?" · "What's Milo's attendance in maths this month?"
• "Note for Ari: forgot homework again" · "Any notes mentioning homework this week?"
• "How is my Robotics class doing?" · "Which students are failing?"
• "Mark Junie present in maths" · "Cancel all my classes today except P1"
• "Assign chapter 4 problems to Robotics due Friday"
• "Book the gym Friday 2pm to 3pm" — it checks for clashes and files it for approval
• "Report card for Ada" · "Anything I should know?" · "Undo that"

Press ❓ Help for the full list, 📋 Briefing for what needs attention, and ⌘K to search pupils and commands. Typing a / gives you the slash commands if you prefer them.

✨ Smarter offers a one-off ~1 GB download that runs a language model on your own device — nothing is sent anywhere — and makes Riven better at unclear phrasing and conversation. It is optional, it can be toggled off, and on a browser without WebGPU it will be slow. Chrome handles it best.

On a computer with a mouse, hovering a message shows a copy button, and Copy chat in the header copies the whole conversation — handy for pasting a list into wherever you are marking.

Pickup

🚗 Pickup on your home screen. Dismissal is done by whoever is at the door, so every teacher has it. It opens on Here today.

If nobody in a family is on today's register, the card shows everyone and says so — the register may simply not have been taken, and you still have a child in front of you.

Emergency drill

🚨 Emergency drill on your home screen, or on the Attendance screen. Any member of staff can start one — pick Fire, Lockdown, Earthquake, Evacuation or Other — and every member of staff then gets the same roll call. Anyone already in the portal is pulled onto it within about twenty seconds; anyone who opens the portal lands on it.

Example only — invented numbers.

• Tap a child to mark them safe; tap again to clear it. Off-site is for a child confirmed not in the building. Tick anyone, not just your own class — you account for whoever is standing with you. The row shows who ticked it.
• Unknown means due in today with no register entry, so nobody knows whether they are in the building. They are counted separately and never as accounted for — find them, or mark them off-site.
• A tick shows at once. If it did not save, the row goes back and you are told "NOT SAVED - Ada is still unaccounted for."
• I need something else lets you leave to look up a contact or a medical note. A red bar stays at the top until the drill ends; tap it to go back.

Only an administrator can turn a drill off, and they are asked whether it was a test or the real thing.

Everything else

💬 Messages

Your To: list holds the pupils in your own classes and every member of staff. Parents are not on it. To reach a family, open the pupil's record for their contact details.

🏢 Book a Room

From your home screen. Rooms are labelled Requires approval or Auto-approved, and My Bookings shows yours with a status you can cancel from. An administrator approves the ones that need it.

📦 Materials

Opens your own requests, with tabs for Pending, In Progress, Completed and Declined — so you can see whether the last one was ordered. + New Request takes a title, a category (supplies, technology, furniture, books, other) and a priority; the office works the queue.

📝 Testing

Build a test from multiple-choice and write-in questions, then Assign it to one or more classes with an optional due date. Multiple-choice marks itself; anything with a written answer waits for you. Results can be pushed into the gradebook.

🏆 Activities and 🧭 Staff Duties

If you coach, 🏆 Activities shows your teams with a Roster and Manage button — move a pupil from tryout to active with the status dropdown. There is no per-activity register; attendance in this portal is class-based.

🧭 Staff Duties, on your home screen, opens on My duties — your week, by day, with who else is on with you. Everyone shows the whole rota with your own name in bold. An administrator sets them up. On a day you are on, the duty also appears at the top of your home screen.

🏃 PE Assessment and 🤖 Tech Projects

Two separate pages, each with its own class picker, for the practical work a terminal cannot mark. What you record there is verified evidence and feeds straight into the pupil's skill tree — a fitness result at or above "meets" masters the skill in their Training Log.

💰 RTC

Award it per pupil from the 💰 RTC tab of their Student Hub, or to a whole class at once with 💰 Award RTC in Class Actions — set an amount, give a reason, submit. Editing the catalogue itself is an administrator's job.

💰 RTC in the portal menu opens straight on the IRL Store, for serving a child at the counter. Start typing their name, pick them (arrows and Enter work), and the picker shrinks to one line — name, balance and Change — with the shop underneath: a catalogue item or a custom one, quantity, then Process Purchase. Changing student clears the form, so a price never carries over to the next child. The Bank tab is beside it.

Part 3 · Your preferences

All of it is on one screen — 👤 Profile — except Google Drive, which is on your portal home.

Email notifications

Four switches, and two of them are off until you ask for them:

The boxes show what you will actually receive, including before you have ever saved anything — so opening this card and pressing Save Preferences without touching a box changes nothing.

You always get an in-app notice on the 🔔 bell when one of your pupils is given a strike, whether or not you want the email.

Google Drive

Where pupils' uploaded work is filed. It is not on the Profile screen — it is 📁 Setup Google Drive in Quick Actions on your portal home.

If you do connect your own, the portal creates a folder called RiverTech Student Assignments and files submissions into it by class and assignment. 🔌 Disconnect Drive stops new uploads going there — it does not withdraw the permission you gave Google, so if reconnecting ever misbehaves, revoke the app in your own Google account settings first and then connect again.

How the site looks

🎨 Site Theme on the Profile screen, and it follows your account to any device you sign in on. Six presets — Default Dark, Midnight Blue, Light, Warm Ember, Nord and AMOLED Black — then three optional extras folded away underneath: individual colours, a background image, and a button colour override.

There is no text-size setting; use your browser's zoom (Ctrl and +).

Signing out, and the account actions

⚙️ Account Actions on the Profile screen holds four buttons: 🏠 Back to Main Portal, 🚪 Logout, 🗑️ Delete Account and 🐛 Report a Bug.

You stay signed in on a browser until you press Logout — there is no timeout — so sign out on anything shared, including a classroom machine.

🐛 Report a Bug is worth using rather than mentioning it in passing. It asks for a category, a summary, what happened, the steps to reproduce it, and your browser — which is most of what anybody needs to fix it.

What only an administrator can do

You will not see the 🔑 Admin item in the nav bar, and these are the jobs behind it. None of them is a permission you can be granted temporarily — ask the office.

Quick reference

For when you already know what you want.

Other guides: parents · students · administrators · all four