Practice Mode (Media Looping)
Practice Mode lets you mark out one or more sections of a YouTube video, Recording, or Attachment — a "passage" — with its own loop points, playback speed, and repeat settings, so a student can practise that exact sectio
Where to Find It
Practice Mode is available on the same three media tools covered in Media and Reference Tools:
- a saved YouTube video (a specific video, not a bare playlist)
- a Recording (audio or video)
- an Attachment with an audio or video file
Once one of these is saved in a note, a Set up / open practice button (shown as Practice mode to read-only viewers) appears next to it. Click it to open the Practice Mode workspace.
Setting Up Passages (Teacher)
A passage is one loopable section of the media, made up of:
- a start and end point, set by dragging the handles on the visual timeline (or nudging them with the arrow keys), or by typing exact times
- a playback speed (25%–200%), which preserves pitch where your browser supports it
- Repeat, which loops the passage continuously when turned on
- an optional pause before replaying the loop — either a silent pause (0–20 seconds) or a metronome count-in (1–8 beats at a chosen tempo), which gives the student a moment to reset before the loop starts again
- free-text practice instructions for that passage
You can add up to 50 passages per assignment. Passages appear in a list; click one to expand its details and edit it. Drag the handle on the left of a passage to reorder it, or use the delete icon to remove it.
Enabling for students — A checkbox in the passage list controls whether practice is currently enabled for students. Turn it off to keep working on an assignment without students seeing it yet, or to temporarily pull it from view without losing your setup.
Everything saves automatically. There is no separate Save button — changes save a moment after you stop typing or adjusting. A status line under the details tells you whether changes are saved, waiting to save, or (rarely) failed to save, in which case it will offer to reload the saved version rather than risk losing anything.
If the underlying media changes — replacing a recording, uploading a new attachment version, or changing the YouTube link — your existing passages are flagged for review rather than silently kept or discarded, since the old timestamps may no longer make sense against the new media.
Practising (Student and Parent)
A family member who opens Practice Mode sees:
- Passages — every passage that exists for this media, including ones added by other family members, so everyone can see what's been set up
- My passages — a separate section for passages the family member has added themselves; only they can edit or delete their own
Playing a passage uses the same loop, speed, and pause/count-in controls the teacher configured. Space plays or pauses when the workspace has focus, and the left/right arrow keys nudge playback position by one second.
Adding Your Own Passages
Students and parents can add their own passages independently of the teacher's assignment — useful for marking out a section the teacher didn't specifically call out, or for practising at a different speed than assigned. These are saved automatically and are visible to the teacher (in a read-only "Family passages" section) but can only be edited or deleted by whoever added them.
Customising One of the Teacher's Passages
If you want to practise one of the teacher's passages slightly differently — a different speed, a slightly adjusted start point, your own pause length — you can adjust it directly. Your changes save as your own personal version: the teacher and every other family member still see the original passage exactly as set. A Customized badge shows on a passage you've personalised, visible only to you.
Click Reset to teacher settings at any time to discard your personal version and go back to exactly what the teacher set up.
Known Limitations
- There's no reordering for "My passages" — they're always shown in the order you added them.
- There's no on-screen count of how many passages you've used against the 50-passage limit.
- On some tablets, a loop's start can be audibly slightly later than on a desktop browser, due to how the device's own audio system handles playback — this is a platform limitation rather than a setup issue.
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