--- url: https://spellingcreator.org/docs/guide/interactive-mode.md --- # Interactive mode Any lesson on the hub can be **worked through** on screen instead of read as a page. Press **Start lesson** on the lesson's page, or open its **Practice** tab, and the lesson fills the screen: each section's material appears on its own, then that section's questions one at a time, each with a box to type the answer into. It's meant for a speller and their communication partner to use together during a session. The partner can show the author's answers on screen, steps can be read aloud, and the speller's answers can be saved privately to their account. Practice has its own address, so you can send someone a link that opens the lesson straight into it. Closing it takes you back to the lesson. ## See it in action ## Every lesson works There's nothing to switch on when you write a lesson. Every lesson on the hub can be worked through, including ones written long before this feature existed and ones written by an [AI assistant](./ai-assistants/overview.md). The only exception is a lesson with nothing in it at all, which has no **Start lesson** button or **Practice** tab. The lesson is turned into steps like this: | In the lesson | In interactive mode | | -------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | | A section's text, pictures, spelling words and VAKT activities | One step showing them together, in order | | Each question | A step of its own, with an answer box, after the section's material | | A section with only questions | Opens straight on its first question | | An empty section | Skipped | | A lesson with no questions at all | A read-through: no answer boxes, nothing to save | Text keeps its bold, italics and underlining, but not its footnote numbers, since there's nowhere on the screen for them to lead to. Questions are numbered from 1 within each section, as in the editor. ## What it looks like Interactive mode follows the app's light or dark theme, and everything is sized for reading on a screen for a whole session: text at a comfortable reading size, pictures as wide as the reading column (so they fill a phone's width), spelling words as large cards that are easy to see from across a table, and a [VAKT activity](./vakt-activities.md) set apart in a red-edged card so whoever is running the session spots it and stops. The content is exactly the lesson's; only the presentation changes. A bar across the top shows which step you're on and how many questions have been answered. **Back** and **Next** move between steps, and the last step's button is **Finish**. ## Showing the answers The eye button in the top bar (**Show answers**) shows the answer the lesson's author wrote under each question's answer box. It's there for the communication partner (or anyone presenting the lesson to a group), who would otherwise need the lesson open in a second window to see what the question is looking for. * It's **off every time interactive mode opens**. It isn't remembered, so a speller's own run-through never starts with the answers on screen. * The button only appears when the lesson has at least one answer to show. * What's shown depends on the question type. A single answer, number answer or background knowledge question shows its answer, and a number question shows its working steps too. A multiple answers question shows every accepted answer. Open ended, paraphrase and would you rather questions have no set answer, and say so ("This question has no set answer.") rather than leaving a gap. * A **suggested answers** question labels its answers as suggestions: "Examples, not the only right answers. Anything that fits the topic counts." Whoever is looking at them is usually deciding whether the speller's answer fits, and for this type that's genuinely their call. * **Each answer has a box of its own**, stacked as equals rather than numbered, because any of them is right and numbering would suggest an order. A number question's working is a numbered list below them, since it's how you reach the answer rather than an answer. * **Clicking an answer puts it in the answer box** ("Put this in your answer"), replacing whatever was there, with the cursor at the end so you can keep typing. From then on it counts as the speller's own answer, like anything typed: it's kept, it's saved, and nothing records where it came from. * The answers also appear on the summary at the end, under each answer given. They can't be clicked there, since there's no answer box to fill. * Answers are **never read aloud**, even with this on (see below). ## Answers aren't marked Nothing typed is ever compared with the author's answer, and there's no right or wrong shown anywhere: not while answering, not on the summary, and not with the answers showing, which only puts the two side by side. In Spelling the response is the speller's own, and a verdict from a computer comparing letters would often be wrong, and is the wrong kind of feedback even when it isn't. Judging an answer is left to the people in the session. ## Finishing and saving At the end you see a summary of every answer, with questions that were skipped marked **Skipped**. If you're signed in, the answers are **saved privately to your account** when you press **Finish**. If saving fails, press **Retry**. Signed out, you can still work through the whole lesson and see the summary; there's just no account to save to, and the summary says so. To have answers saved, **sign in before you start**. Saved run-throughs appear in a **Your answers** panel on the lesson's page, under the lesson. It's shown to you and nobody else ("Only you can see these. The lesson's author can't."), and each run-through can be deleted with **Delete these answers**. You can keep up to 20 saved run-throughs of one lesson. After that, saving asks you to delete an older one first. Old ones are never deleted for you. ## Picking up where you left off What's typed is kept on the device as you go, along with which step you were on. If the session is interrupted (a tab closed, a computer shut, a break that ran long), opening the lesson again takes you back to the same step with the answers still there. The lesson page's button says **Continue lesson** instead of **Start lesson** when there's something to come back to, and the step you return to says "Picked up where you left off", with a **Start again** button in case it's somebody else's unfinished attempt. Things worth knowing: * **It stays on this device.** Unfinished answers never leave the browser and don't follow you to another computer. Only a finished, saved run-through is stored in your account. * **It's kept per person.** On a shared computer (at a clinic, say, or in a home with more than one speller), each signed-in account has its own unfinished run-through of each lesson, so nobody is dropped into someone else's answers. People who are all signed out share one per lesson, since there's nothing to tell them apart, which is why a resumed run-through always says so and offers **Start again**. * **A run-through belongs to whoever started it.** If a different account signs in while the lesson is open (in another tab, say), the answers aren't filed to that account when you press **Finish**. The summary explains, and the answers stay on the device for the person who started. * **Leaving keeps your answers.** Closing mid-way asks "Leave the lesson?" and reminds you the answers are kept. Press **Discard answers** if you want to throw the attempt away. If the browser won't let the app keep anything (private browsing, or storage that's full), it warns you instead that leaving discards what's been typed. * **Once saved, the device copy goes.** It's removed as soon as the run-through is saved to your account. A failed save keeps it, so you can come back and try again. * **Edits to the lesson are handled.** If the lesson is edited between sittings, each answer still matches its question. If the step you were on has been deleted, the lesson opens at the start with your answers still filled in. * A browser keeps unfinished run-throughs for the 20 lessons used most recently, and forgets one nobody has come back to in 90 days. ## Privacy: who can read saved answers Only you. * Nobody else can read your saved answers: not the lesson's author, not a moderator, not an admin. There is no way in the app to see someone else's. * An author can see their lesson and its comments, but not who worked through it or what they wrote. * Answers don't go through the language filter that comments do, because nobody but you ever reads them. * Unfinished answers kept for picking up later never leave the device at all, so nobody can even tell that a lesson was opened. ## Reading aloud The speaker button in the top bar (**Read aloud**) turns on reading aloud. The lesson is spoken by your own device; no lesson text is sent anywhere. If the browser can't speak at all, the reading-aloud buttons don't appear. With it on: * each step is read as it appears: the section name, then the text, picture captions (never their credits), the spelling words, a VAKT activity, or the question; * a button reads the current step again (**Read this step again**), and stops it while it's speaking; * **every spelling word has its own speaker button**, for hearing one word again; * **Voice settings** chooses a **Voice** and a **Pace**, from 0.7x to 1.5x normal speed. A question's answer is never spoken, even with the answers showing. Reading aloud is often the speller's setting, and speaking the answer as the question appears would give it away. Showing it on screen is a deliberate choice; speaking it would be a side effect of one. Your choices (on or off, voice and pace) are remembered on this device, so you don't have to set them up for every lesson. The same settings are under **Reading aloud** on the **Settings** page, if you'd rather set them up before a session. A change made in one place shows up in the other the next time it's opened. ### Natural voices The voices a browser offers vary from device to device, and some sound robotic. On a computer that can run them, the voice list also offers **Natural voices**: eight English voices (Heart, Bella, Nicole, Fenrir, Michael and Puck with American accents, Emma and George with British accents) made by an AI voice model running on your computer. * **Computers only.** Natural voices are offered on computers whose browser and graphics hardware support WebGPU, not on phones or tablets (on an iPad, the model froze and then crashed the browser). Phones and tablets use the browser's own voices. They also aren't offered on a metered connection until the voice has been downloaded once. * **A one-time download.** The browser's default voice stays the default. The first time a natural voice reads, it downloads about 330 MB, once. Choosing one on the Settings page, or with reading aloud off, downloads nothing. * **Never silent while it downloads.** During the download the browser's voice reads, and a line under the step count shows the progress. The natural voice takes over from the next thing spoken. * **Once downloaded, it's ready in a moment.** When practice opens with reading aloud on, it takes a couple of seconds to get ready ("Getting the natural voice ready..."). A step waits up to five seconds for it rather than starting in the browser's voice. If it takes longer, the browser's voice reads that step and the natural voice takes over once it's ready. * **The browser's voice is the backup.** If the download fails, it's tried again on the next step, up to three tries in a visit, picking up where it left off. If the natural voice fails partway through a step, the browser's voice finishes it; after two steps like that, the browser's voice reads for the rest of the visit. The line under the step count says which is happening. * **English only.** A lesson in another language is read with English pronunciation, as it would be by any English voice. To free the space, **Delete models** under **Downloaded AI models** on the Settings page removes the voice (and any other downloaded models). It downloads again the next time it's used. For how interactive mode, saved answers and read-aloud work underneath, see the [developer notes on interactive mode](../developers/web-app/interactive-mode.md).