Prerequisites and GitHub Education

Prerequisites and GitHub Education

What you need before your first classroom: a GitHub organization on the right plan, a free upgrade through GitHub Education, and a network that can reach GitHub.

What you need

• A GitHub account for you. Students each need their own account; the free plan is enough for students.
• A GitHub organization on the Team or Enterprise plan. Classroom 50 stores everything in an organization and relies on Team-plan features, most importantly GitHub Pages from a private repository.

Create the organization at github.com/account/organizations/new if you don't have one. The Free plan is enough to create it; the next two sections cover the upgrade.

The organization's plan is separate from your account

Organizations have their own plans, separate from any plan or benefit on your personal account. A teacher benefit on your account does not upgrade your organization by itself: you apply for the benefit first, then use it to upgrade the specific organization your classroom will live in.

Getting the Team plan free through GitHub Education

Verified teachers get GitHub Team free for their organizations:

1. Apply to GitHub Education as a teacher. Verification goes fastest with a school-issued email address and clear proof of your role, such as a photo of a valid faculty ID or an employment letter. Blurry or expired documents are the most common reason applications are rejected.
2. Wait for approval. Many applications clear in a few days, but allow up to one or two weeks; apply well before the term starts.
3. Once approved, upgrade your organization to GitHub Team at no cost through your GitHub Education benefits.

If your school already runs GitHub Enterprise, your organization may already be covered; see the next section.

Enterprise organizations

Enterprise-managed organizations work, but two setup warnings look like failures and aren't:

• "Couldn't verify the Actions spending cap" (a read failed (400) warning). Billing is managed at the enterprise level, so Classroom 50 can't read it. The warning is advisory; setup continues. See Couldn't verify the Actions spending cap.
• Branch protection can't be applied. An enterprise policy can pin branch-protection settings so that neither you nor Classroom 50 can change them from the organization side. Ask your enterprise administrator to adjust the policy, or note the warning and continue.

Enterprise policies can also restrict which OAuth apps an organization can use. If Classroom 50 doesn't appear or can't be granted, an owner or enterprise administrator needs to approve it; see My organization doesn't appear.

School and district networks

Classroom 50 runs in the browser, so the browser itself must reach GitHub and the app's domains. On a filtered network, ask IT to allow the short domain list in Network and allowed domains.

Two related problems have known workarounds:

• classroom50.org is blocked or flagged. A few ISPs and school filters have flagged the domain; add an exception or switch DNS resolvers. See classroom50.org won't load, or is flagged as unsafe.
• The sign-in proxy is blocked. Some networks block workers.dev, which breaks the normal Sign in with GitHub button. Sign in with a personal access token instead; see If the proxy domain is blocked.

Next steps

With the organization on the Team plan, follow the Web Teacher Guide or the CLI Teacher Guide to run the one-time setup and create your first classroom.