This article walks through what Live Classroom does, how to start and run a session as a teacher, and what students see and can do while a session is live.
What is Live Classroom?
Live Classroom lets a teacher run a lesson in real time while students work on their own devices. You can lead the lesson yourself, advancing steps, moving between lessons in a course, pausing for discussion, and pulling everyone’s attention to a specific part of the screen. Or you can let students work through it at their own pace.
Either way, the Progress Panel shows you where every student stands as it happens. You can check the whole class’s responses before moving on, and share student work anonymously to start a discussion.
Starting a live session
Live sessions start from Teach mode:
Switch to Teach using the toggle at the top of the editor.
Select the class you’re teaching.
Start a live session.
For more on Teach mode, see Edit & Teach.
You can run two kinds of sessions:
Lesson sessions: run a single lesson live, step by step.
Course sessions: navigate across multiple lessons within a course without ending the session, so you’re not restarting live mode every time you move to a new lesson.
Any teacher of the class who joins the session gets the same controls as the teacher who started it.
Getting students into the session
Kira offers a few ways for students to join, so you can pick whatever’s fastest for your class:
Join code: share a simple 6-character code for students to enter.
Shareable link: post or send a link that drops students straight in.
Dashboard notification: students see a notification on their Kira dashboard.
Auto-redirect: students in the class you selected are redirected into the session automatically.
Choosing how the session is paced
Teacher-paced: you lead the lesson, and students follow along in sync.
Student-paced: students work through the lesson at their own pace, and you can bring the class back together when you’re ready.
You can switch between teacher-paced and student-paced at any point during a session. Students keep their unsaved work when you switch.
What students see and can do
Students can always see whether the session is teacher-paced or student-paced.
In a teacher-paced session
Once a student joins, their view locks to whatever step you’re currently on. They’ll see a persistent banner letting them know they’re in a live session, and the navigation rail is greyed out so they can’t jump ahead or fall behind on their own.
Within the current step, students can still:
Type and edit in code editors
Answer quiz questions
Interact with any other step-level content
The only thing locked is step-to-step navigation. That stays in your hands as the teacher.
In a student-paced session
Students move through the lesson on their own, and all content unlocks for them. Your content access settings apply again once the session ends.
Raise hand
In both modes, students have a hand-raise button they can use to let you know they need help. Raising a hand is silent, so other students don’t see it. You can acknowledge each student individually or lower all hands at once.
Follow Teacher
In a teacher-paced session, students can freely scroll within the current step at their own pace, for example to re-read something above where you are. If they’ve scrolled away, a single click on Follow Teacher re-syncs their view to your position. It’s a one-time snap, not continuous tracking, so it won’t fight them while they’re reading.
Your pacing controls
As the teacher, you get a persistent control bar for running the session:
Next / Previous: move one step at a time.
Next lesson / Previous lesson: move between lessons within a course session.
Pause: freeze the session, for example to open up a discussion.
Resume: pick the session back up after a pause.
Teacher-paced / Student-paced: change how the session runs without ending it.
End Live: close out the session for everyone.
Focus On Me
Need to point everyone at one specific thing without changing steps? Click Focus On Me to instantly jump every connected student’s view to the topmost element you’re currently looking at. It’s the fastest way to say “look here” without losing your place.
Seeing where every student stands
The Progress Panel opens automatically beside the lesson when you start a live session. It shows who’s in the session, including a live connected count, and a status for each student that updates as they work. You can see at a glance who needs you:
Working: The student is active, but there isn’t enough to go on yet.
Needs help: Kira has spotted signs the student may be stuck, like a raised hand, repeated incorrect answers, being idle or on one step too long, or falling two or more steps behind. The reason appears on the student’s card.
On track: The student is answering correctly and keeping up.
Done: The student has submitted everything in the current section.
Each student shows one status at a time. If more than one applies, Needs help shows first.
Students don’t see their own status or anything about their classmates.
On steps with nothing to grade, like videos or readings, many students will show as Working. The panel will let you know when a step has nothing to measure.
Open any student to see their current work and their progress through the lesson.
If you need to remove a student (like if they joined the wrong session), you can do so with one click, plus a confirmation step to prevent accidental removals.
Checking responses before moving on
The Responses view shows the whole class’s work on one activity at once, including which answers are correct, so you can check whether a concept landed before moving on.
Sharing student work anonymously
Bring student responses into the discussion without singling anyone out. Shared work appears without the student’s name by default.
Quick Share: click Quick Share to show a student’s response to the class right away.
Snapshots: save a student’s response as a snapshot, then share it whenever you’re ready during the session.
Present to the class
Click Present to show a clean display on the classroom screen. It shows only the lesson content and any work you’ve shared, never student names, class progress, your controls, or answer keys.
Ending a session
When you click End Live, students see a calm transition screen before returning to free navigation, with no jarring cutoff. Once the session ends, the join code and shareable link are automatically invalidated, so they can’t be reused.
Have questions about running your first Live Classroom session? Reach out to Kira Support and we're happy to help.