What is a Practiceathon?
A Practiceathon is a time limited campaign where students log their practice minutes toward a goal. It can run as a pure practice challenge, or with fundraising added so supporters can donate or pledge in support of stud
The Core Idea
A Practiceathon gives your students a structured motivation to practise more consistently over a set period — typically three to four weeks. Students log their minutes, progress builds up, and families stay engaged through the Family Hub and a public campaign page you can share with the wider community.
At its simplest, a Practiceathon is just a practice challenge. But it's also designed to support fundraising, which means it can double as a sponsored event where friends, family, and the broader community back your students financially.
What a Practiceathon Can Include
A Practiceathon can run in different modes depending on your school's goals:
Practice-only — students track minutes, see their own progress, and optionally compete on a leaderboard. No donations or pledges involved. Good for building habits or running a friendly internal challenge.
Practice with immediate donations — fundraising is enabled, and supporters can donate a fixed amount right away from a student's public page. Payment is processed immediately through your school's Stripe account.
Practice with pledges — supporters commit to donating a set rate per practice minute (for example, $1 per minute, capped at $50). The exact amount isn't charged until after the campaign ends and final practice totals are confirmed.
Combined fundraising — both Donate Now and pledge options are available to supporters at the same time.
Who Does What
You (the teacher or admin) set up the campaign, choose the settings, enrol the students, and manage the campaign from the Octavia teacher app. After the campaign ends, if fundraising is enabled, you finalise the students' practice totals and trigger pledge collection emails.
Students log their practice through the Family Hub using a built-in timer. If you've enabled manual entry, they can also enter minutes directly without using the timer.
Parents receive practice session notifications and — if you've turned on parent confirmation — approve each session before it counts toward the campaign total. If a student is a younger child whose family uses a parent account for Hub login, the parent logs and confirms practice on their behalf.
Supporters (families, grandparents, community members) can view the public campaign page, watch the school-wide progress and leaderboard, and donate or pledge through individual student pages.
The Two Public Surfaces
A Practiceathon has two public-facing pages, both hosted on the Octavia public site and accessible without login:
The school campaign page — shows the overall campaign, a school-wide progress summary, and a leaderboard of participating students ranked by practice minutes. It links out to individual student pages.
Individual student pages — each participating student has their own page showing their personal progress, a message from the student (if they've written one), and (if fundraising is enabled) buttons for supporters to donate or pledge.
These pages can be shared as links with anyone — you don't need to send people through the Hub or give them an Octavia account.
A Note on Scope
Practiceathons can be set up as school-wide campaigns (visible to all students across your school, promoted broadly) or as teacher-run campaigns (limited to one teacher's students). School-wide is the right choice for fundraising events and any campaign you want to promote publicly. Teacher-run is better for a smaller-scale practice challenge or a pilot.
Next: Creating a Practiceathon