The front-desk kiosk

Kiosk mode turns a tablet by the door into a self-service check-in screen, so students mark themselves in and your front desk stops being a queue. It shows the class roster as a wall of photographs with one instruction: Tap your photo to check in.

There are two ways to start it. A staff member can launch it from the Calendar on a device already signed in, or a dedicated tablet can sign in directly at the kiosk address and stay there permanently.

A tap does not check anybody in on its own. It opens a card showing who is about to be marked present, and nothing is written until that card is confirmed — which is what stops a sleeve brushing the board from logging attendance. If you want a second check, turn on Confirm who is checking in in Settings › Kiosk and the student also types the date of the month they were born: someone born on 3/5/1980 types 5. There is nothing to hand out and nothing to reset, and a six-year-old can pass it. Students with no date of birth on file just get the confirmation tap.

When two classes run at once

Most nights overlap somewhere — the little ones are still on the mat when the teens arrive. The kiosk shows every class running right now, and you choose how they are laid out in Settings › Kiosk › Check-in screen. Each option is shown with a picture of the screen it produces:

• One board, grouped by class — everyone on one screen under their class heading. Nobody has to pick a class first, so a young student still finds their own face. This is the default, and it is what we recommend.
• Side-by-side class columns — a column per class, each scrolling on its own. Best with two or three at once; past that the photos get small.
• A tab for each class — one class fills the screen at full size and a row of tabs switches between them. Best when somebody is at the front desk during the changeover.
• Find your name — no class list at all, just an A to Z strip and a search box over everyone who can check in right now. Best for a large school.
• Classic: one class at a time — how the kiosk worked before, showing whichever class is running with a Switch Class menu.

A student on the roster of two classes running at the same time is asked which one they are there for, on the same card that confirms who they are. With one class running, all five look much the same.

Once it is running:

• It stays open indefinitely and will not sign itself out mid-evening. You can leave the tablet on the counter all week.
• It follows your timetable on its own, and the header names what is on. The roster refreshes itself, so a student added mid-evening appears without anyone touching the tablet.
• Refresh is deliberately outside the PIN, so anyone at the desk can pull a change onto the screen. It will not reload while somebody is mid-check-in.
• Admin is behind a four-digit staff PIN, so a curious student cannot poke around. The check-in screen can be changed from there as well as from Settings, and it changes every kiosk in the studio. Exit Kiosk Mode lives behind the same PIN.