Run a Class Exhibition Online When Your Students Can't Have Accounts

Most art teachers who try to put a class show online hit the same wall at the same moment. The platform is fine, the work is ready, and then the sign-up screen asks a 13-year-old for an email address. IT says no, or the consent form takes three weeks, or half the class never finishes registering. The project quietly dies.

On Galerra a student joins a class with a link and a nickname. No account, no email address, nothing to provision per student.

How the joining actually works

You create a classroom from your own teacher account and get one invite link. Put it on the board, in the class stream, on a printed slip — that is the entire distribution step.

A student opens it, types a nickname, and lands straight in their own workspace. From there they upload their photographed work, give each piece a title and a few lines, and their walkable 3D show is built for them. No 3D software, no placing anything by hand, nothing to install. A free class holds five works per student, which is a term’s worth for most briefs; the current tiers are on the pricing page.

The nickname is the only identity a seated student ever has. The field refuses anything that looks like an email address or a phone number, because a nickname ends up in a gallery title and a minor’s contact details must not go there by accident.

Coming back on a different computer

A seat lives in one browser. A student who joined on a school machine and then opens the link at home would otherwise be starting from nothing, with their nickname already taken.

So a student can save a four-digit code. It’s the only credential in the system: no email, no password, nothing that identifies a child. They pick four digits, write them in their sketchbook, and typing their name plus those digits on the class link picks the work back up from any computer. Build it into the first lesson, right after the nickname, or you’ll spend the next lesson fixing it.

What you control

You are the one legally responsible for what goes on those walls, so the controls are blunt on purpose.

Hide a show from the hub. Reversible. The class hub lists every student’s show, and you decide which ones appear on it. Useful for work that isn’t finished, or a student who’d rather not be listed.

Delete a show. This takes the gallery and its works down for good, and unlinks it from the student’s seat so they can start a new one on their next tap. This is the one to use when something needs to come off a wall in seconds.

Revoke a seat. Ends that student’s access on their next request. It deliberately leaves the show up, because “this student may no longer edit” and “this work should come down” are different decisions.

You can also remove individual pieces. Because the class shows belong to your account, opening one gives you the ordinary owner Edit panel with its Artworks tab.

What a parent sees, and what nobody sees

Someone will ask, so here is the precise answer.

A student show is unlisted and carries a noindex instruction, so search engines are told not to list it. It doesn’t appear in Galerra’s explore page, the sitemap, or anyone’s profile. It’s reachable by the link, and the link is one you and the student hand out.

On a student’s show there is no price on anything, no inquiry or contact form, no comment box and no reactions. An open message field under a child’s artwork is a contact channel, and that’s the one thing a school will not accept. The inquiry endpoint refuses class shows outright, not just in the interface.

Students are listed by nickname, and the hub shortens anything that reads like a full name to a first name and an initial — a student who types “Maria Papadopoulou” appears as “Maria P.”

The hub is the one surface designed to be shared outward. You choose whether it’s public, reachable by link only, or off entirely.

Run it in one lesson

A workable sequence for a single 45-minute period, assuming the work is already made.

1. Before the lesson. Create the classroom, copy the invite link, and have it on the board. Make one show yourself with two images so you can demonstrate in thirty seconds.
2. First five minutes. Everyone opens the link and types a nickname. Tell them the nickname is public. Then everyone sets a four-digit code and writes it down.
3. Next ten. Photographing. Flat light, no flash, camera square to the surface — shooting from an angle bends a rectangle into a trapezoid, and no amount of cropping puts it back. Glazed and varnished work goes near a window, never under a ceiling light, or the reflection lands in the middle of the piece.
4. Next twenty. Upload, then title and describe each piece. Insist on this part. “Untitled 3” tells a visitor nothing, and writing two sentences about your own work is half the educational value of the exercise.
5. Last ten. Walk one student’s show on the projector. Drag to look, WASD or the arrow keys to move, joystick on a phone. Do the critique in the space, at scale, the way you would in a corridor hang.

Then send the hub link home.

At the end of term

The work stays up. A class show doesn’t expire on its own, and the link a parent saved in June still opens in December.

If you gave the class an end date, its hub page shows the run as archived rather than going dead, which is closer to how a real exhibition reads afterwards. If you’d rather it came down, delete the shows or switch the hub off.

Every gallery also opens as a flip-through 3D catalogue, which projects well and makes a tidier end-of-year artefact than a folder of JPEGs.

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Ready to try it with one class? Galerra for Education has the teacher side, see how it works first if you’d rather, and current plan details live on the pricing page.