Technical Support for Zaner-Bloser Online Products in the Portal

Digital administrators are the people responsible for overseeing accounts and the assignment and usage of licenses for their school or district. They are solely responsible for creating and managing accounts for teachers for their school or district. A school or district can have 1–20 digital administrators.

Annual subscription (license) start dates are set by your digital administrator. All licenses purchased for the current school year will activate automatically on the selected date, and they expire one year after the activation date. Please note: Some licenses have longer durations than one year.

Licenses are distributed to digital administrators within 24 hours of order processing. If your order has been processed by Zaner-Bloser, it has been more than 24 hours, and your digital administrator hasn’t received an e-mail listing the licenses ready to distribute, the e-mail is likely caught in their junk folder. Check there first. If the e-mail isn’t in their junk folder, have your digital administrator contact Zaner-Bloser tech support for assistance.

Students log in to the portal using their username, password, and school ID. Students can also log into the portal by scanning printed, teacher-generated QR code badges on camera-enabled tablets and computers. (See Quick Start Guides for instructions for creating badges.)

No, students cannot change their own password. Teachers can change students’ passwords on the Classes page.

The school ID needs to be unique in the portal and should be easy for students to remember. It must be 4–16 characters long and consist of lowercase letters and numbers only.

We recommend considering three factors when selecting the license start date for your account: when school starts, whether your teachers need access to the portal before the first day of school (for training or planning), and whether teachers and/or students will need access to the portal for summer school next summer.

Once the date has been set for your account, it cannot be changed by you or your digital administrator. Digital administrators can request a license start date change by contacting a Zaner-Bloser technical support representative.

There are two types of licenses that allow access to content in the portal: teacher licenses and class licenses.

A teacher license gives a teacher access to teacher resources, and a class license gives a group of up to 30 students access to student resources. With a teacher license, a teacher can create their class and manage the roster, but without a class license assigned to their class, students will not be able to log in and access their resources.

A school digital administrator has responsibility for one school on MyZBPortal.com, whereas a district digital administrator oversees one or more schools within the district in the portal. The district digital administrator can distribute licenses to specific schools and access reports for all schools within the district.

School and district digital administrators can assign teacher licenses to teachers. By default, teachers can also self-select teacher licenses from the available licenses on the account. This feature can be disabled by a digital administrator. Instructions for assigning licenses are provided in the Quick Start Guides.

School and district digital administrators can assign class licenses to classes. By default, teachers can also self-select class licenses from the available licenses on the account. This self-select feature can be disabled by a digital administrator. Instructions for assigning licenses are provided in the Quick Start Guides.

Classes can have up to five teachers to allow co-teachers, specialists, aides, and other paraprofessionals to manage the roster, assign quests, and view reports for that class. Each teacher needs their own teacher license.

Each district or school may have up to 20 digital administrators on their account.

Individual licenses are not available to purchase. Teacher and class licenses are tied to the minimum purchase of specific print materials. Contact your sales consultant to determine the most cost-effective way to get the number of licenses you need.

Licenses for most products have a term of exactly one year, and they are tied to the purchase of consumable student materials. If your account has not yet made a purchase for the next year that qualifies for a renewed subscription to MyZBPortal.com, your license will expire on the date one year after the license start date.

We recommend that digital administrators import students using the student import template file provided on the Manage Users > Imports page in the administrator portal or set up a rostering integration. They can also add students individually. Instructions for all three methods are provided in the Rostering Guides.

Teachers can create their class roster by adding existing student users or creating and adding new student users one at a time. Instructions are provided in the Quick Start Guide. Please note that teachers cannot add or remove student users if their school/district account currently has a rostering integration in place.

Yes, automated rostering is achieved via an integration between the portal and a compatible school information system (SIS), using the OneRoster 1.1 CSV standard. Digital administrators set up and manage the integration on the self-serve Integrations Dashboard. To have the Integrations Dashboard enabled on your account and get started, contact Zaner-Bloser tech support.

Yes, Zaner-Bloser offers two SSO options for teachers and students.

MyZBPortal.com is LTI compliant. Our digital materials can be integrated as LTI links with compatible school learning management systems (LMSs). Digital administrators will be able to set up and manage LTI 1.3 integrations on the self-serve Integrations Dashboard beginning in August 2023. To inquire about availability and have the Integrations Dashboard enabled on your account, contact Zaner-Bloser tech support.

MyZBPortal.com is also Clever Instant Login capable for SSO. (Please note: We are not Clever Secure Sync capable for rostering.) Using Clever Instant Login is free of charge but does require setup with Zaner-Bloser. Contact tech support to get started.

The Integrations Dashboard is a webpage (in the Manage menu) for digital administrators. This dashboard allows digital administrators to set up and manage rostering and single sign-on integrations for their school or district. It is designed to be self-service, so it provides the following helpful information to digital administrators as they sync their data: status update of when files last processed, approximate time remaining to complete a file upload, exportable list of errors and directions for correcting errors (if any occur), and a count of how many records were processed.

The Integrations Dashboard is a feature that can only be enabled on school digital administrator or district digital administrator accounts. Contact Zaner-Bloser tech support to have it enabled on your account.

A quest is any activity, such as a game or an assessment, that a teacher assigns to students in the portal. A quest can be assigned to a whole class or to specific students.

Quests are activities or assessments that teachers assign to students. Once students complete quests, their results feed into the Reports page so that you can see how they fared. Independent activities are activities that students can complete on their own without being assigned, and information about those activities also feeds into the Reports page. The two types of student activities are reported on separately.

We recommend that students use a stylus when interacting with Zaner-Bloser Handwriting digital activities for the best results.

Yes, they can change their preferred language (English or Spanish) at any time in their settings for these specific programs. They will be prompted to select their preferred language the first time they access Zaner-Bloser Handwriting online resources.

The Superkids Online Fun app is available to use on iPad and Android tablets (not phones). Visit the Apple App Store or the Google Play store and search for “Superkids Online Fun” to download the app.

No, activities are unlocked according to the student’s word list. Completing the pretest in the portal will automatically unlock the emerging (orange circle), on level (blue diamond), or challenge (green square) word list and corresponding activities for the student. The pretest scores for each list are in the Teacher Edition eBook.

To prevent this, navigate to the Classes page, click Class Settings, and check the box to prevent students from retaking pretests.

No, scores cannot be uploaded to unlock content for the differentiated word lists. We recommend having students complete the pretest in the portal. If students have already done the pretest on paper, they would have to redo the pretest in the portal to unlock content. Please note, their word list could change if they get a different score on the online pretest.

After the student does the writing activity, they submit it to the teacher for approval. If the teacher accepts the activity, a score will be generated automatically. However, the teacher can choose to send the activity back to the student to edit and resubmit.

The Superkids Portal was migrated to MyZBPortal.com in summer 2022. The migration included online resources for The Superkids Reading Program, The Superkids Foundational Skills Kit, and Happily Ever After and user accounts. Program content did not change on the portal (or in print); in some cases, online resources may look slightly different. MyZBPortal.com is Zaner-Bloser’s central platform for all digital products and program content, and it provides a more stable, secure, and modern platform for teaching and learning.

Homeschoolers using The Superkids Reading Program access the portal just like a school would. The homeschool instructor serves two roles: the digital administrator and the teacher. To get started, the homeschool instructor should first log in as the digital administrator to manage accounts and licenses for the teacher (themself) and, if applicable, the student(s). See the School Administrator Quick Start Guide for step-by-step instructions. Now you are ready to teach and log in as the teacher. See the appropriate Teacher Quick Start Guide for how to navigate the portal as a teacher and begin using your online resources.

Yes, you can request a free trial of many of our programs’ online resources. For all other programs, contact your local sales consultant about demo accounts.