What is Termites?

Termites is software to create seating charts for your classroom – download here. Instead of wasting time creating charts by hand and dealing with all those clashes of who can’t sit next to who, and who has to sit in the front row but needs to sit next to her, and putting all the top performing students together. It takes hours by hand when you could be teaching! Well Termites does all that for you and in less than a minute.

Is Termites hard to use?

Not at all. You just enter student names and the the positions of your desks then press the Place Students button. All your students will then be randomly placed at the desks. If you also enter a few relationships between the students then Termites will keep the kids with bad relationships as far from each other as possible and out of line of sight. And conversely, it will keep kids with good relationships as close together as possible. You can also easily glue particular students to specific desks or instruct Termites which students should be closer to the front or back.

What is student ability about?

Student ability is a new feature version 2 for placing students according to an arbitrary ‘ability’. Ability could be average marks for topic tests, a subjective assessment by the teacher, student height, or anything at all you would like it to be. Next time you press the Place Students button Termites will place students with similar ability closer to each other. Depending on which checkboxes you tick in the Room view you can instruct Termites to place students with any combination of relationship, ability, and line of sight. Try doing that in less than a minute with pen and paper!

How can I keep up to date?

Joining our newsletter is probably the best way, we send it out around once a quarter. You could also read out blog, it is mostly about product updates, around once a month.

Why don’t students always go where I want them to?

The optimal seating chart is not always the most obvious, otherwise we would just create them by hand. Since Termites takes a holistic approach as it assigns students to desks, some students won’t be where you expect. However, by adjusting the relationships between the students you can influence this positioning.

Where is the front of the room?

By default the top of the seating plan view is the front of the room (See termites-1.9.0.png). This can be flipped so the bottom of the plan view is the top of the room from the Options menu though.

How do I create a random seating plan?

Untick all the checkboxes in Room view (relationships, ability, and line of sight) before pressing the Place Students button. This instructs Termites not to consider these things when placing the students. If they are all unticked then you are basically telling Termites to place the students at random. It will however still place students near the front or back if set and leave glued students where you put them – this is important for those students needing special help. All the other students will be placed at random around them.

How do I glue a student to particular desk?

In the Room screen, right-click on a desk and choose the student you wish to glue. The next time you press the Place Students button this student will remain at that desk while all the other students are positioned around her.

How do I unglue a student from a desk?

Delete the desk and then recreate it by left-clicking. The next time you press Place Students, the unglued person will be allocated to a desk just like everyone else.

How do I change the room size?

Enter new values in the size boxes in the top right-hand corner of the Room screen. Then click the Update button.

Is there a faster way to add all these people?

Sure is! Add the first student as normal by clicking the Add Student button, type their name, and then press Enter. Now instead of clicking the Add Student button again just start typing the next student’s name, then and press Enter again. You can continue doing this until you have run out of students, then go back and add relationships to each student.

Why are some students missing when I try to add a new relationship?

Because they already have a relationship with that person. Relationships are two-way, if John has relationship with Sally, it’s implied that Sally has an equal relationship with John. Therefore John will be missing when trying to add a new relationship to Sally.

Can I access my data?

Of course you can. The Termites data file is standard XML with an easy to follow schema. You are free to use 3rd party software to access this data anytime, now or in the future. Curious? Try opening up a data file in your favorite text editor.

Where is the Termites manual?

We hope that Termites is simple enough to not require one. With this FAQ page, the tour page, and friendly one-on-one individual email support direct from the author, we hope that you wont even miss having a manual.

Why can’t I open, save, or print?

Because your trial period is over and Termites has been locked. To unlock it you will need to purchase a licence. Check out the purchase page for more information.

Do you donate free unlock keys to special people?

Yes, we have a philanthropy program and have donated stacks of free software. We also give generous discounts to university students training to be teachers. Contact us to find out more about either of these options.

What if a new version is released?

Just download and install the new version right over top of the old version. The unlock key will last forever and unlock all future releases with the same major version number. These are versions which have the same first digit of the version number; 1.6 and 1.9 for example. If a major version if released within 3 months of your purchase then we will send you a free unlock key for the new version.

Will it destroy my computer?

No it wont. Termites has been downloaded has been used in hundreds of schools by thousands of teachers and there has never been a single report of exploding computers. If you are unsure then have a chat to your school technology administrator or just contact Richard for a chat.

Is there a free trial?

Yes, it’s free to download and use the fully functional seating chart software for 14 days. After that trial period ends a few features will be disabled – printing, and file loading and saving. See the purchase page for details.

Can we really install Termites on an unlimited number of computers?

Yes, most people use multiple computers these days. But, with an individual Teacher Licence, only the teacher who purchased the unlock key can use the software. For the Faculty Licence, all teachers from the same faculty may use the software. And, for the School Licence, all the teachers in the school may use the software.

Can we trust you?

Yip, our little business, Tiny Rock, was formed by Richard, an ex high school science teacher and his wife, the crafty designer and philanthropist. We just create software to make teachers lives a little easier. We use use PayPal, so we never see your credit card information, and only need your email address so we can send the unlock key. You can read our legal details if you like.