Question 1

What is a summary (Inhaltsangabe) and what matters most?

Accepted Answer

Picture a child telling a friend at break time what a book is about: briefly, factually, in their own words, without acting out the plot. That is exactly what a summary does. It stays in the present tense, keeps the events in order and leaves out direct speech and personal opinion. Teachers mostly look at completeness, the right tense and clear, neutral wording of one's own.

Question 2

What makes a good narrative in primary school?

Accepted Answer

A narrative takes the reader along on a real experience or an invented story and builds up tension: first an opening, then a climax where you hold your breath, and a rounded ending. Vivid words, direct speech and a clear thread make it come alive. Unlike a report or a summary, it is allowed to embellish and may be as gripping as it likes.

Question 3

How does a report differ from a narrative?

Accepted Answer

A report is the sober cousin of the narrative: it informs factually and concisely about an event and answers the key questions: who, what, when, where, how, why. It uses the past tense, keeps the chronological order and drops tension, embellishment and personal opinion. Think of a newspaper article or an accident report: facts, not feelings.

Question 4

What is assessed in a dictation?

Accepted Answer

In a dictation the teacher reads out a text that the children write down as accurately as possible: it tests confidence in spelling and punctuation. Usually the number and type of mistakes are counted, with a spelling error often weighted differently from a missing comma. How strictly it is counted is set in the end by your school or the agreement in place.

Question 5

What is a description and which kinds are there?

Accepted Answer

In a description the child paints a precise picture with words, so the reader can imagine the thing without seeing it: factual, ordered and in the present tense. Depending on the topic there are many variants: describing an object, a person, an animal, a process, a route or a picture. A process description explains step by step, like a recipe; a route description guides you safely from A to B.

Question 6

How do a summary and a retelling differ?

Accepted Answer

Both retell a text, but in a different tone. A retelling recounts a heard or read story vividly in one's own words: it keeps the suspense and the order, mostly in the past tense, and may be colourful. A summary, by contrast, condenses briefly and factually in the present tense. In short: a retelling wants to entertain, a summary wants to inform.

Question 7

What is a picture story?

Accepted Answer

For a picture story the child gets a series of pictures, often a wordless comic strip, and turns them into one coherent, gripping story. The pictures set the order and the main events, imagination fills in the rest: names, feelings, direct speech. Teachers often look at whether all the pictures are linked sensibly and whether a clear thread emerges.

Question 8

What is a story built from prompt words?

Accepted Answer

Here the child is given a handful of prompt words, say dog, thunderstorm and key, and has to weave a story in which all of them fit naturally. The prompt words are the spark for imagination and give a frame at the same time. As with any narrative, structure, suspense and a clear thread that ties the words together naturally are what count.

Question 9

What goes into a profile card (Steckbrief)?

Accepted Answer

A profile card is the short form of a description: a clear list of the most important features, often in bullet points rather than full sentences. For a person, an animal or a character you list things like name, appearance, size, special traits and likes in an orderly way. You know it from animal fact cards or the classic friendship book: quick to grasp and boiled down to the essentials.

Question 10

What is the difference between a personal and an official letter?

Accepted Answer

With a letter it all depends on the recipient. A personal letter to grandma or a friend may be warm and relaxed, with a greeting like Dear Grandma and a casual tone. An official letter, say to a school or a club, stays polite and factual, with a fixed layout: sender, date, subject line, a formal salutation and a closing formula. Both need a clear structure.

Question 11

What is an opinion piece or argumentation?

Accepted Answer

In an opinion piece the child argues a reasoned position on a question, for example whether phones should be allowed at school. Instead of just telling a story, you gather arguments, back them with examples and order them sensibly. In secondary school this grows into a full argumentation that also weighs the opposing side. The aim: a convincing, easy-to-follow point of view.

Question 12

What is typical of a fable?

Accepted Answer

In a fable animals act like people: the sly fox, the vain raven, the busy ant. Each animal stands for a character trait, and at the end there is a lesson or moral you can carry over to real life. The stories are short and pointed. In class children often rewrite fables or invent their own to match a given moral.

Question 13

How do you recognise a fairy tale?

Accepted Answer

Fairy tales begin with Once upon a time and often end with happily ever after. In between anything is possible: talking animals, witches, magic and the number three that keeps coming back. Good and evil are clearly divided, and in the end good usually wins. Children write their own fairy tales or retell familiar ones, using these well-known building blocks.

Question 14

What makes a poem, and what is an Elfchen?

Accepted Answer

A poem plays with language: with rhyme, rhythm and images, arranged in lines and stanzas rather than running text. In primary school short forms are popular, above all the Elfchen: eleven words spread over five lines (1, 2, 3, 4, 1). Such fixed blueprints take away the fear of the blank page and make writing playful.

Question 15

What is a rubric and why does it help with correction?

Accepted Answer

A rubric is a structured assessment grid: per criterion (e.g. content, structure, language) it sets what earns how many points. Rubrics make assessments consistent across the whole set of papers and comprehensible for children and parents alike. In Laura, the rubric is freely configurable.

Question 16

Is an assessment matrix the same as a rubric?

Accepted Answer

Largely yes: "assessment matrix" is the common term in Berlin school practice for a criteria-based assessment grid. In Laura, binding rubrics set school-wide can be locked so that all teachers assess by the same standard.

Question 17

What is an expectation horizon?

Accepted Answer

An expectation horizon describes in advance which content points a task should meet: the "model answer" for the assessment. It makes objective sub-tasks fairly comparable; for judgement tasks (e.g. an essay) pedagogical leeway remains on top.

Question 18

How are points converted into grades?

Accepted Answer

A grade scale maps point totals to grades (e.g. grade 1 from a certain percentage). In most federal states it isn't binding uniformly by percentage, but is set at school or teacher level. Laura converts transparently by the disclosed scale: as a proposal, not as a fixed grade.

Question 19

Which correction marks does Laura use?

Accepted Answer

Correction marks are the teacher's usual margin notations (e.g. R for spelling, Z for punctuation, A for expression). Laura supports a configurable list and places them in the inline overlay at the sourced spot: which marks apply stays with the teacher or school.

Question 20

What does "Evidence Layer" mean at Laura?

Accepted Answer

The Evidence Layer is the proof layer: for every assessment proposal, Laura shows the supporting spot and the original excerpt from the exercise book. It stays visible what a proposal rests on: the assessment rests on evidence, not on a gut feeling.

Question 21

What does an Evidence Card show in the review view?

Accepted Answer

The Evidence Card is the UI card that brings together five layers per assessment criterion: evidence, interpretation, proposal, decision and audit. It makes visible why a proposal arises and prevents a pure "gut-feeling assessment".

Question 22

What do the colours green, yellow, red and black mean?

Accepted Answer

The confidence traffic light shows how sure the handwriting recognition is at a given spot: green means confident, yellow asks for a second look, red calls for a check, and black stands for illegible. Uncertain spots go into a guided review view and are never quietly guessed. So the teacher sees at a glance where to look more closely. Black is not a fourth step on the same scale, it is a different statement: there is nothing legible here. That is not especially high uncertainty, it is a refusal to guess. This is why every colour is always accompanied by a word.

Question 23

What lies technically behind the coloured traffic light?

Accepted Answer

Behind every traffic-light colour sits a rating of how confidently a single word was recognised: confident, uncertain, critical or illegible. This rating decides whether a word is put forward for review and whether Laura may learn from it for the handwriting. It is, in a sense, the foundation from which the visible traffic-light colour arises.

Question 24

Why doesn't Laura put every word up for checking?

Accepted Answer

Laura doesn't hand you every single word a second time. Whatever she read confidently passes through; only the shaky spots, the parts flagged yellow or red, land in a small queue. That way you work through the few doubtful cases on purpose, instead of re-reading text that was already clear. And whatever you decide there, Laura remembers for next time.

Question 25

Which spots must the teacher check before the grade?

Accepted Answer

Before the final grade, the teacher checks all red and black tokens as well as yellow tokens with low average confidence. This rules out an uncertain recognition flowing into the assessment unchecked.

Question 26

Does Laura hand out grades automatically?

Accepted Answer

No, never on its own. Laura makes suggestions and shows you openly where she is sure and where she isn't: but the grade is yours to give in the end. No result slips through unasked. Every move you make is recorded cleanly, so it stays traceable later who decided what. And it is precisely from these deliberate decisions that Laura keeps learning, not from guesses of her own.

Question 27

What does "human-in-the-loop" mean at Laura?

Accepted Answer

Human-in-the-loop means: every pedagogically relevant decision is confirmed by a teacher before it applies. The AI takes on the groundwork and the proposals, but the human stays in the decision loop: Laura proposes, the teacher decides.

Question 28

What is a proposal in Laura?

Accepted Answer

A proposal is Laura's assessment suggestion before the teacher decides: including confidence and the marking that it comes from the AI. A proposal is never a fixed grade, but the starting point for the teacher's decision.

Question 29

Can the teacher override a Laura proposal?

Accepted Answer

Yes. With the override, the teacher actively overrides a proposal and replaces it with their own decision, with a justification. The process stays traceable in the audit trail, so it's clearly documented who changed what and when.

Question 30

What is a teacher override?

Accepted Answer

"Teacher override" is the teacher's view of the override: the deliberate correction or rejection of an AI proposal by the responsible teacher. It's the mechanism that puts the core principle "the teacher decides" into everyday practice.

Question 31

What's special about Laura's feedback PDF?

Accepted Answer

The no-surprises PDF is only created after the teacher has confirmed, corrected or discarded all proposals. It contains exactly the released decisions: no silent automatic changes. Partial results are shown transparently.

Question 32

How does Laura help with wording report cards?

Accepted Answer

The report-card module proposes wordings from sourced Evidence Cards, not from a free prompt. The teacher can edit or reject every proposal. Report-card sentences stay tied to documented performance instead of freely generated.

Question 33

How does Laura handle a reading and spelling difficulty (LRS)?

Accepted Answer

With a reading and spelling difficulty there are two levers. Disadvantage compensation only adjusts the conditions, for example more time or larger print, while the requirement stays the same. Grade protection goes further and adjusts the assessment itself, for example when spelling mistakes count for less. In Laura this is a stored profile that only takes effect when the teacher or the school actively switches it on, never on its own. What is allowed is set, in the end, by your school.

Question 34

Who actually decides how grading is done?

Accepted Answer

Grading rules come about like a chain, from the top down. The federal level only gives a rough framework, as a recommendation. The state turns it into binding requirements that differ from state to state. The school fills them in, the subject group gets more specific, and right at the front stands the teacher, who decides for the individual child. Each level sharpens the one above it, and in a justified individual case one may depart from it.

Question 35

When does a school need a data processing agreement?

Accepted Answer

When a service provider processes personal data on the school's behalf, the GDPR requires a data processing agreement. It governs the purpose, scope, security and deletion of the data. It's the basis for the school staying responsible under data protection law.

Question 36

When is a data protection impact assessment needed?

Accepted Answer

A data protection impact assessment (DPIA) checks the risks of a processing operation for the people concerned in advance. For systematic processing of children's data it is generally mandatory. It documents risks and safeguards before a procedure starts.

Question 37

How does Laura prove that data is deleted on time?

Accepted Answer

Deletion and retention events are logged, so it's provable when which data was deleted or retained. That supports the right to erasure and a verifiable retention concept.

Question 38

What does it mean concretely that Laura is built to the GDPR?

Accepted Answer

The GDPR is the EU General Data Protection Regulation. At Laura the safe path is the default: processing happens locally first, and processing in the cloud has to be switched on deliberately and is only possible on a legal basis, with a log. Stored data stays on servers in Europe. So data protection is Laura's preset, not a checkbox ticked afterwards.

Question 39

When is parental consent needed?

Accepted Answer

Consent is one possible legal basis for processing that isn't already covered by school law, such as cloud processing of especially sensitive data. It must be freely given, informed and revocable. Which basis applies is clarified by the school or the data protection officer.

Question 40

What's the difference between pseudonymisation and anonymisation?

Accepted Answer

With pseudonymisation, clear names are replaced by identifiers; the mapping is stored separately and can only be resolved with additional knowledge. Anonymised data, by contrast, allows no personal reference any more. Laura keeps the clear-name mapping local and encrypted, separately.

Question 41

What are TOM in data protection?

Accepted Answer

TOM are the concrete safeguards for personal data: e.g. encryption, access control, logging and deletion concepts. They prove that data is adequately secured and are part of a school's data-protection evidence.

Question 42

What is a consent gate?

Accepted Answer

A consent gate is a mandatory module before especially sensitive steps (e.g. audio processing or cloud escalation). It captures the legal basis, storage period and right of revocation before data of that kind is processed at all.

Question 43

Does the student data stay on the teacher's device?

Accepted Answer

Local-first means that by default nothing leaves your system. Processing anywhere else is not the standard, it is a decision you make: on controlled European servers or, only with a legal basis, via cloud services. An unknown or unset mode uploads nothing at all, it stops instead. Whatever is stored permanently sits on servers in Europe.

Question 44

How does Laura prevent schools from seeing other schools' data?

Accepted Answer

Row-Level Security is a database mechanism that binds every row to its tenant: a teacher only sees their school's data. Cross-tenant access is technically excluded. At Laura, RLS is mandatory on every table.

Question 45

How are several schools kept apart in one system?

Accepted Answer

Multi-tenancy means: several schools or providers share one instance but are strictly separated by Row-Level Security; cross-tenant access is excluded by design. Laura runs on European servers, and each school stays in its own sealed space.

Question 46

What is a tenant?

Accepted Answer

A tenant is an isolated school or provider unit within multi-tenancy. It's the boundary at which Row-Level Security takes effect: one tenant's data is technically invisible to other tenants.

Question 47

Where are the exams processed?

Accepted Answer

The processing mode sets where a task is handled: from the local default right on the device, through controlled processing on European servers, to cloud paths that are only allowed on a legal basis and once explicitly enabled. There is no silent shift into the cloud, every step outward is a deliberate decision.

Question 48

Can a school switch off individual AI functions?

Accepted Answer

A kill switch is a switch that fully deactivates a whole module (e.g. cloud OCR or audio). A school can thus define at setup which processing paths are allowed at all: deactivated functions don't even start.

Question 49

Does real student data go to external AI providers?

Accepted Answer

No. External model sources are used only along expressly regulated, anonymised paths; real student texts never go to public model platforms. The permitted path is clearly defined instead of being silently assumed. That keeps it controllable what leaves the house at all, and in what form.

Question 50

How does Laura recognise handwritten text?

Accepted Answer

OCR (for handwriting: HTR) turns image content into text. Laura runs several recognisers in parallel (local paths first, a cloud fallback only with consent) and reconciles them, instead of relying on a single recogniser. The result is evidence, not a fixed truth.

Question 51

What is an OCR token?

Accepted Answer

A token is the single-word representation of the recognition result: the recognised text plus its position in the image (bounding box), its confidence and its confidence class. Tokens are the smallest unit on which Laura hangs evidence, proposals and decisions.

Question 52

How does Laura decide whether cloud AI is needed?

Accepted Answer

The confidence cascade works in four stages: first two local, free recognisers run and compare their result. If they agree confidently enough, the exam is finished for free and locally. Only the contested spots go to two independent cloud processes and are compared again. Whatever stays uncertain after that is not guessed but put to the teacher.

Question 53

What is the Assessment Object Model?

Accepted Answer

The AOM is Laura's generic data model: Assessment → Submission → Evidence → Proposal → Decision → Output. It's deliberately not German-specific, so further subjects can plug in. It's the blueprint along which every task is processed and documented step by step.

Question 54

What is a submission?

Accepted Answer

A submission is exactly one student's hand-in for an assessment: the second level in the data model. Attached to it are the recognised tokens, the proposals and the decisions of that one piece of work.

Question 55

What does Laura store about a teacher decision?

Accepted Answer

For every decision Laura keeps several layers: the spot in the exercise book, the machine-recognised text, the text confirmed by the teacher, the confidence rating and the type of decision, plus the necessary supporting data. This makes it fully traceable later what a grade rests on and who made it. Nothing is left to memory or guesswork.

Question 56

What kinds of decisions are there?

Accepted Answer

Every move you make gets a clear label: accept, correct it yourself, unreadable, doesn't belong or look at later. That label tells Laura exactly what you did with her suggestion. And it is the switch that steers learning: only certain deliberate decisions may change Laura's picture of a handwriting, a mere click-through does not.

Question 57

What happens when I correct a suggestion myself?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes Laura reads a word wrong. You simply type in the right version, and that's it. This one time is enough: Laura saves your correction and keeps an eye out for it when the same handwriting shows up again. All that matters is that something is actually there; from an empty field she learns nothing. So she only improves where you deliberately stepped in.

Question 58

How do you mark a spot as unreadable?

Accepted Answer

With the unreadable decision, the teacher marks a token as not legible. A corrected text is excluded here; the decision flows into the handwriting profile as a negative signal. "Not legible" thus honestly stays that way, instead of being guessed.

Question 59

What does "not relevant" mean for a token?

Accepted Answer

"Not relevant" marks tokens that shouldn't flow into the handwriting profile: such as drawings, numbers or special characters. Laura thus only learns from real handwritten text and not from artefacts that say nothing for handwriting recognition.

Question 60

What happens with an escalation?

Accepted Answer

With escalation, the teacher passes a conflict decision on to the school management. A meta event is created without a handwriting-profile update, and a justification is mandatory. Escalation is one of the governed paths when a conflict can't be resolved on the spot.

Question 61

How does Laura resolve two contradictory correction states?

Accepted Answer

With the merge-edit strategy, the teacher types a new final text that replaces both contradictory states. A new edit decision results from it. No state is silently overwritten: the teacher deliberately sets the authoritative text.

Question 62

What happens if the same exam was corrected on two devices?

Accepted Answer

Laura overwrites nothing silently, but asks the teacher which state applies. There are governed strategies: keep the local state, keep the server state, merge or escalate. The resolution thus stays a deliberate decision, with a trace.

Question 63

How does Laura ensure decisions aren't changed after the fact?

Accepted Answer

All log entries of a piece of work are linked together like the links of a chain: each entry carries a digital fingerprint of the one before. If someone altered an entry afterwards, the fingerprint would no longer match and the chain would break visibly. So it is immediately apparent whether the decision history has been tampered with.

Question 64

What is an unchangeable log?

Accepted Answer

An unchangeable log is a record that can only be added to; changing or deleting is ruled out. Every correction decision is held in it like a stamp in a logbook that cannot be retouched away later. So the history stays honest and complete, even weeks on. What went in stays in, exactly as it was.