Vocaband
Vocabulary learning that actually sticks — a gamified classroom platform for Israeli EFL students (grades 4–9) and their teachers.
🌐 www.vocaband.com · 📜 License · 🔐 Security Policy · 📨 [email protected]
⚠️ Source-available, not open-source.
This code is published under MIT License with Commons Clause — see LICENSE for the full text.
✅ You may read, study, and learn from this code
✅ You may fork it for non-commercial educational use
❌ You may not sell it, host a paid service derived from it, or rebrand it as your own product
For commercial licensing inquiries: [email protected]
What it does
Vocaband turns vocabulary drills into a short, competitive classroom experience. Students join a class with a short class code (or scan a QR code for a Quick Play session — no account needed), pick from a wide library of interactive game modes, and their progress streams live to the teacher's dashboard.
Every word is available in English + Hebrew + Arabic so the UI fits Israel's two dominant first languages, fully RTL-aware. Curriculum-aligned to the Israeli Ministry of Education English vocabulary (CEFR A1 → B2).
No app store. No personal data required for students. Works on any device with a browser.
Screenshots
A quick tour — from a teacher launching a class to a student earning XP.
One trilingual front door
Teachers sign in, students join with a class code or QR — no app store, fully right-to-left for Hebrew and Arabic.
Teachers onboard themselves
Sign in with Google, confirm you're a teacher, and find your school in the official Israeli Ministry of Education registry (~5,000 schools) — searchable in English or Hebrew. No manual approval, no waiting.
For teachers
For students
Table of contents
Why Vocaband
| Feature | Vocaband | Typical vocab apps |
|---|
| Trilingual (English / Hebrew / Arabic) | ✅ Built-in, RTL-aware | ❌ Rarely |
| Quick Play — QR scan, no login | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Live classroom competition | ✅ Real-time leaderboard | ❌ No |
| No student account needed | ✅ Join by class code + name | ❌ Registration required |
| Self-serve teacher sign-up | ✅ Google + pick your school, instant | ❌ Manual/slow onboarding |
| Game modes | ✅ Multiple modes, each with its own visual identity | ❌ 1–2 max |
| Smart word input (paste, OCR, AI translate) | ✅ Deep | ❌ Manual only |
| Teacher analytics (per-word, per-student) | ✅ | ❌ Basic |
| Accessibility (WCAG 2.0 AA, IS 5568) | ✅ 10-feature toolbar | ❌ Limited |
| Aligned to Israeli MoE curriculum | ✅ | ❌ Generic |
| Adjustable display size for teachers | ✅ A / A / A toolbar control | ❌ Browser zoom only |
What's new (2026)
The platform has matured significantly in 2026. Headline improvements:
- Self-serve teacher sign-up — teachers now onboard themselves: sign in with Google, confirm "I'm a teacher", and pick their school from a searchable dropdown of the official Israeli Ministry of Education registry (~5,000 schools) — searchable by Hebrew or English name, with a free-text fallback for anything not listed. No waiting for manual approval. A free trial starts automatically. (Students still sign in only with a class code + PIN — never through this door.)
- Refreshed landing page — a focused, single teacher/principal sign-in with a two-column hero that places the pitch beside the sign-in card on desktop, flips left/right for Hebrew & Arabic, and collapses to a clean stack on tablet and mobile.
- Trilingual UI everywhere — every student-facing screen, every teacher-facing screen, every dashboard module, every onboarding flow, every privacy/cookie banner, every live-challenge / setup wizard / Quick Play monitor, and every analytics/gradebook view now renders cleanly in English, Hebrew, and Arabic with full RTL mirroring.
- Streamlined teacher dashboard — assignment building, Quick Play, and roster tools were consolidated into a single "New Activity" surface. Fewer clicks, no hunting for buttons.
- Per-mode visual identity — each game mode has its own colour theme, mechanic-specific layout, and bigger mobile tap targets (88px+).
- Memory Flip — a face-down card flip game that reuses the Matching word pool but tests memory + meaning.
- Matching → drag-line — two-column layout with finger-drag SVG line drawing. Tap-tap fallback preserved for accessibility.
- Scramble → tap-to-assemble — letter tiles in a tray instead of an on-screen keyboard.
- Spelling letter slots — see the word's shape before typing; positional feedback on submit.
- Quick Play language picker — students pick EN/HE/AR right after entering nickname + avatar; switchable mid-session.
- Tabbed avatar picker — themed emoji groups + vector icons for kids who want a non-cartoon identity.
- Roster-based student login — teachers can pre-create a roster; students sign in with a short PIN — no Google account, no email required.
- Interactive worksheets — assign self-paced worksheets; attempts are recorded and surfaced in the teacher dashboard.
- Certificate v2 — class certificates now include a "words mastered" stat.
- Friendly soft-exit for students — accidental back-button presses get a confirmation instead of yanking kids out of a session.
Features
🎮 Game modes
Vocaband ships a deep library of game modes — each with its own visual theme, mechanic, and pacing:
- Flashcards — self-paced review with a true 3D flip card.
- Classic — see the English word, hear it, choose the correct translation.
- Fill-in-the-Blank — a sentence with one word missing; pick the word that fits.
- Listening — audio only, no text. Trains the ear.
- Spelling — hear the word, type it. Letter slots reveal the word's shape; positional feedback on submit.
- Matching — two-column drag-line, finger-drag to match (tap-tap fallback).
- Memory Flip — face-down card flips, classic memory mechanic on the Matching pool.
- True / False — decide if a word–translation pair is correct.
- Word Scramble — tap-to-assemble letter tiles from a tray.
- Reverse — see the Hebrew/Arabic word, pick the English translation.
- Letter Sounds — phonics-driven: each letter lights up and sounds out.
- Sentence Builder — listen to a sentence, tap word tiles in order to build it.
Teachers can restrict which modes are available per assignment or Quick Play session.
👩🏫 For teachers
- Self-serve sign-up — Sign in with Google, confirm you're a teacher, and pick your school from the searchable Israeli Ministry of Education registry (~5,000 schools, findable in Hebrew or English). Your teacher account and free trial are created instantly — no manual approval step.
- Quick Play — Generate a QR code for instant vocabulary sessions. Students scan and play; no login required. Live podium with leader-change celebration chime, kick-student control, and a final-results modal.
- Class management — Create classes with shareable, WhatsApp-friendly codes. Rename classes and pick curated avatars any time without disturbing students or progress.
- Roster + PIN login — Pre-create your students; they sign in with a short PIN. No Google accounts, no email collection.
- Assignment builder — Pick from thousands of curriculum words, upload a
.docx, paste a list, snap a photo (OCR), or pick from dozens of curated topic packs (Animals, Food, Family, Weather, Sports, House Rooms, Opposites, At the Doctor, Money & Shopping, Daily Routine, In the City, Holidays & Celebrations, Tools & Gadgets, Question Words, Greetings, and many more).
- Saved templates — Tick "Save as template" on any assignment and reuse the exact words + modes + settings in one tap.
- Saved word groups — Saving a template also saves its words to "Saved Groups" for instant reuse.
- Smart paste — Paste words from any source. Exact matches auto-add; fuzzy matches show as click-to-add suggestions. Hebrew + Arabic paste supported.
- AI translation — Custom teacher words are automatically translated to Hebrew and Arabic.
- Word families — Toggle to see related forms (happy → happier, happiness) as suggestions.
- Interactive worksheets — Assign printable / interactive worksheets; student submissions stream back to the dashboard.
- Mode control — Choose which modes each assignment includes.
- Sentence Builder config — Multiple difficulty levels with auto-generated sentences from your vocabulary.
- Approvals queue — New students sign up with "Request Account"; teacher approves from the dashboard tray (auto-refreshes).
- Analytics & gradebook — Per-student trend charts, top struggling words, class-average comparisons, mistake patterns by mode.
- Class certificates — One-click PDF certificates that include a "words mastered" stat and render Hebrew/Arabic names correctly.
🎓 For students
- Join instantly — Class code + name + emoji avatar. No email, no password. Or sign up with Google OAuth, magic-link email, or a teacher-issued PIN — whatever your teacher configured.
- Returning or new — Clear "I'm returning / I'm new" toggle on the login screen.
- Tabbed avatar picker — Themed emoji groups (Animals / Faces / Food / Sports / Space / Vehicles) plus a Geometric tab with vector icons.
- Language choice — Inline EN/HE/AR picker at the top of the mode-selection screen. Switches everything — tiles, tooltips, intros — instantly.
- A library of game modes — Each assignment can include any subset.
- XP, streaks, badges — "Perfect Score", "Streak Master", "XP Hunter", and more.
- Mode intro screens — Brief instructions in English, Hebrew, or Arabic before each game.
- Cumulative session scoring — Quick Play sessions accumulate points across multiple modes for a fair leaderboard. Score restored on rescan so kids who walk away don't lose their lead.
- Friendly back-button — Accidental back-button presses prompt for confirmation instead of dropping you mid-session.
- Motivational feedback — Audio + visual encouragement on correct answers.
⚡ Quick Play — QR scan, no login
Teachers pick words, hit Launch, and students scan a QR code to join instantly:
- Short session code + QR code side by side
- All game modes selectable per session (teacher's choice is respected end-to-end)
- Real-time teacher monitor with live podium
- Join flow: scan → pick avatar (themed emoji groups + vector icons) → enter nickname → pick UI language → join.
- QR collapses to a small floating icon when the teacher hides it, with a live-joined badge.
- All teacher actions (Words list + End Session) live inside the QR card.
- Leader-change celebration chime + auto-music shuffle every 2 minutes (multiple background tracks, teacher-selectable theme).
- Live connection indicator + polling fallback so the podium stays fresh.
- Teacher can kick a student mid-session.
- Same-nickname re-join — if a student loses connection, rescanning with the same nickname adopts their old slot with score preserved.
- Final-results screen for students — rank + top-3 mini podium highlighting "(you)".
- Custom teacher-added words supported alongside curriculum words (with AI translation).
- Per-session cumulative scoring across the modes played.
🏆 Live Challenge — classroom competition
A real-time competition mode for whole classes. Students join their class channel, the teacher broadcasts a word set, and the leaderboard updates live as answers come in.
- Ranked top-3 podium with crown animation and medal badges
- Leader-change chime
- Final-results modal when the teacher clicks "End Challenge"
- Connection-status pill + auto-reconnect with jittered back-off
📊 Analytics that matter
- Reports dashboard — Per-week trend chart, top struggling words across roster, plays-per-day histogram, attendance grid.
- Performance matrix — Every student × every assignment, color-coded by score. Click any cell to see details.
- Most-missed words — Which words students get wrong most, with Hebrew/Arabic translations and which students missed each one.
- Students needing attention — Auto-identifies students scoring below threshold or with high mistake rates.
- Score by game mode — Bar chart of average performance per mode.
- Student profiles — Score trend chart, class average comparison, most challenging words, full attempt history.
- Gradebook — All students with expandable score details, mistake counts, and last-active dates.
- CSV + PDF export — UTF-8 CSV that renders Hebrew/Arabic correctly in Excel; PDF embeds Noto Sans fonts so non-Latin names render correctly with right-aligned RTL.
Accessibility
Vocaband meets WCAG 2.0 Level AA and Israeli Standard IS 5568:
- 10-feature accessibility toolbar (font size, high contrast, grayscale, inverted colors, dyslexia font, line spacing, reduce motion, underline links, highlight focus, reading guide)
- Full keyboard navigation with skip links and visible focus indicators
- Screen reader support: ARIA landmarks, labels, live regions
- Full RTL support for Hebrew and Arabic (layout mirrors, text aligns right, bidirectional safe)
- Accessibility statement in English, Hebrew, and Arabic at
/accessibility-statement
- Teacher display-size control (A / A / A) for projector / older-eyes use
Privacy & security
- No personal data required for students — class code + first name + emoji is enough.
- Teachers self-register, students can't — teacher sign-up is a deliberate "I'm a teacher + pick your school" step behind Google sign-in; student emails and anonymous sessions are refused server-side, so only teachers create teacher accounts. Sensitive database writes stay guarded by row-level security as a backstop.
- Trilingual privacy policy at /privacy-policy (English, Hebrew, Arabic).
- Vulnerability disclosure — see SECURITY.md. Responsible disclosure encouraged; report privately to [email protected].
Operational, infrastructure, and implementation details are intentionally kept out of public documentation. For commercial integrations or specific security questions under NDA, please reach out via [email protected].
Getting started (users)
Teachers: visit www.vocaband.com, sign in with Google, confirm you're a teacher and pick your school from the dropdown, then create a class and share the class code with your students. Your account and free trial start immediately — no approval wait.
Students: open the class link (or scan the QR code) your teacher shares — or go straight to www.vocaband.com/student. Enter your class code, pick your name and avatar, and start playing. Tap "I'm new" to request an account your teacher approves. No email or password required.
Quick Play (no account, no class): when your teacher launches Quick Play, scan the QR code they show on their screen, pick a name, and start playing immediately.
License
MIT License with Commons Clause.
Source-available for personal, educational, and non-commercial use. Commercial use, resale, hosting as a paid service, or integrating into a proprietary product requires a separate commercial license — reach out to [email protected].
Acknowledgments
- Vocabulary lists derived from the Israeli Ministry of Education English curriculum
- Hebrew + Arabic font support powered by Google's Noto Sans family
- Every teacher and student who has tested the app and told us what to fix next
