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Setting Up Printago for Education

Printago works for classrooms as well as print farms. Teachers write lessons with Classwork, students print the parts those lessons reference on the school's printers, and every job in the queue shows which student sent it. This page explains how schools, labs, teachers, and students fit together.

Key Concepts​

  • School is your school, college, or university. Its IT Admin looks after all of the school's labs from one place.
  • Lab is a Printago account for one physical lab or group of printers. It holds the lab's printers, part libraries, and classwork, and it is where the lab is administered. Every separate lab needs at least one Printago account.
  • Teachers and staff run a lab. They administer its printers, write its classwork, and invite its students. Several teachers can run the same lab, and a Lab Admin, such as a lab technician, is optional.
  • Students use their own Printago accounts to join the labs and classrooms they take part in.

How It Fits Together​

A. The School's IT Admin​

The IT Admin is a school-level user who oversees the school's labs.

  • Invites each lab's teachers and staff to join the school.
  • Becomes an admin of every lab that joins, alongside the lab's own teachers, so they can run the lab on a teacher's behalf.
  • Manages some settings for the whole school, but not everything: day-to-day lab work stays with the teachers.
  • Chooses which labs they are a member of and what they can do in each one. That is also how the school manages what students can do: by managing their membership and roles in the school's labs.

B. Teachers and Staff​

Teachers and staff are regular Printago account holders. Joining a school means handing some management over to it.

  • Run their lab's Printago account like any other account: administer its printers, write classwork, and invite students.
  • Accept an invitation to join the school. Accepting tells them the school will be able to help manage their lab. This is different from joining a single account as a member.
  • Can share a lab with other teachers, and can add a Lab Admin if they want one.

C. The Lab​

Everything a lab needs lives in its Printago account: the 3D printers, part libraries, classwork, and lab administration. If your school has separate labs, each one has its own account.

D. Students​

Students belong to the labs and classrooms they take part in, never to the school itself.

  • Create their own Printago accounts.
  • Join each lab they take part in with the Student role.
  • See the printers, parts, files, and classwork of every lab they belong to.
  • Are the admin of their own personal Printago account. Students switch between their labs and their own account from the account chooser at the top of the sidebar, and use their own account for their own printers.
  • Are never managed by the school's IT Admin. The IT Admin can only change what a student can do inside the school's labs.
Coming Soon

The school level, including the IT Admin and the school management page, is not available yet. Until it is, each lab works on its own: a lab is a normal Printago account, its teachers run it, and students join it the same way employees join an account. Printago support can create student accounts for your school in the meantime. Contact support@printago.io.

An Example School​

Riverside High has two labs: the Engineering Lab in Room 214 and the Art & Design Makerspace.

  1. Ms. Reyes sets up a Printago account for the Engineering Lab and connects its printers. Mr. Chen also teaches there, so she invites him to the account as an Admin. The lab technician, Pat, joins as Lab Admin.
  2. Ms. Okafor sets up a separate Printago account for the Makerspace. She runs it alone, without a Lab Admin.
  3. Sam, Riverside's IT Admin, invites both labs to join Riverside High. Once Ms. Reyes and Ms. Okafor accept, Sam is an admin of both labs.
  4. Jordan, a student, creates a Printago account. Jordan joins the Engineering Lab for Intro to Engineering and the Makerspace for Art 2, and sees the printers, parts, and classwork of both.
  5. Jordan also has a printer at home. Jordan switches to their own Printago account to run it, then switches back to a lab when it's time for class.
  6. At the end of the year Mr. Chen moves to another school. Sam removes him from the Engineering Lab and adds his replacement, and the lab's printers, parts, and lessons stay put.
  7. When Jordan finishes Art 2, Ms. Okafor or Sam removes Jordan from the Makerspace. Jordan's own account, and their membership in the Engineering Lab, are unaffected.

Student Accounts​

Students always own their Printago accounts. A student joins a lab by accepting an invitation to it. Someone new to Printago creates their account from the invitation link, and a student who already has an account signs in with it. See What Happens Next.

Free Printago for Students​

Verified students get free, full access to Printago while they are students at a school that pays for Printago. They can use it on their own account for their own printers, not just the school's.

Coming Soon

Student verification is not available yet.

Setting Up a Lab​

  1. Create a Printago account for the lab, or use an existing one. Each separate lab needs its own account.
  2. Open Add-Ons > Marketplace from the sidebar and activate Classwork. It is a free addon.
  3. Connect the lab's printers.
  4. Invite the other teachers who run the lab from Users with the Admin role. Add a Lab Admin the same way if the lab has one.
  5. Open Classwork from the Education section of the sidebar to start writing lessons.

The Classwork page covers writing lessons, publishing them, and assigning them to students.

Students Join Each Lab​

A teacher invites students from Users and gives them the Student role.

  1. Navigate to Users from the sidebar
  2. Click Invite User
  3. Enter the student's email address
  4. Select the Student role (it appears in the role list once the Classwork addon is active)
  5. Click Send Invite

Once the student accepts, they can see the lab's printers, parts, files, and the classwork assigned to them, and they can print the parts their lessons reference. For the full list of what the Student role allows, see Roles: teachers and students and the Roles & Permissions List.

A student in several labs gets one invitation from each and joins each one. They still sign in with a single login.

Invitations expire after 7 days, and each account can send up to 10 invitation emails per day. See Inviting Users for resending and revoking invitations.

When Several Teachers Share a Lab​

Everything in a lab's account is shared by the teachers who run it. Every teacher's classwork, parts, and files live in the same library, so agree on how to keep them organized with Classwork folders, for example a folder per teacher or per class.

Students still see only the classwork assigned to them, but they can see every printer, part, and job in the lab, so students from every class in that lab share one queue. The chip on each job in the Print Queue shows who queued it.

Need help setting up your school? Join our Discord community for support and tips from other educators!