I’m looking into using firewalled replit as my students are very young (9-12 year olds), and I don’t want them to have the capacity to engage in discussion with other users from outside our organisation. But when I use firewalled Replit, there is a big orange message with a link to Exit Firewall Mode. They seem to be able to just click this link and access the Community. I must be missing something here, but I’m not sure what!
I would have hoped that if their account was created (without email address) from my Teams link in Firewalled Replit, that their account would not operate on the non-firewalled Replit. Any help would be appreciated, as I’m concerned that our access will be cut off if my student accounts can still easily access the Community features (ie ability to engage in discussions with unknown adults)
Note: While in theory the organisation can block normal Replit and prevent this, many of my students also work from home, so it won’t be blocked there. The large orange ‘Exit Firewall Mode’ button will just encourange them to exit Firewall Mode.
Ideally I would like that student accounts created from invitation in Firewall mode can only operate within that mode. If a student also wants to operate in normal mode, that should require an invitation from a non-firewalled Team. Thanks.
Firewalled Replit doesn’t prevent students from accessing the community. It prevents Repls from accessing the internet, and therefore using proxies to avoid your school’s internet restrictions.
There should be a feature where they could hide the Exit Firewall button and when they go to replit.com and not firewalledreplit.com they should be logged out automatically whenever they are logged in into the normal replit website.
If you would like to prevent your students from reaching normal Replit, set a flag in your router settings to block any connections to replit.com. The process of doing this varies per router brand. Since you may be in a school environment (based on your post) you may have to ask your network administrator to set the flag for you.
Here’s what the docs say:
The community features are only hidden. If one of your students are really smart and find some exploit, they may be able to access such features.
Thanks, but unfortunately I teach very young (9-12 year olds) online. They are distributed across many schools and at home. So blocking normal Replit is not an option. I had hoped that if I created student Teams accounts for them in Firewalled Replit (without their email addresses), that they would not then have access (via a big orange button) to normal Replit.
The main concern is that these students may be encouraged (via Replit) to engage in discussions with unknown adults via the Community. They really need to be restricted to chatting only with members of their own Team, which was one of the things that Firewalled Replit suggested would happen.
@python660 , I noticed after my reply that this is a fairly old post. I have recently started trying to use firewalled replit in the hopes that it will be more reliable and performant in my classroom than the regular site. Do you have any experience leading you to think one way or the other on Firewalled reliability vs regular?
I’ve tried using Firewalled Replit (in a non-school setting however) and I can say that they remove the community features and abolish proxies, while having the same level of reliability. My only problem is that the teacher also has to be on firewalled mode otherwise the two aren’t compatible with each other. Otherwise, I think it would be 10x times better than constantly monitoring your students and checking for proxies, games, and social media.
My issue is inconsistent access to assignments created in Firewalled mode. I will make the assignment in Firewalled mode and some students will be able to access it from firewalled mode and some students won’t (a dialog box explaining that they must re-open the assignment in non-firewalled mode or leave appears).
So far, I cannot tell why some students get the dialog and some don’t. Which students are affected seems to change each day.
…thus, I am hoping to find some teachers who are happily living in Firewalled Replit, so I can do as they do. So far, I have only found a handful of tire-kickers.
If a repl is opened in normal replit, then it will not be accessible from firewalled replit for a while, with a message that it was “started by someone not in Firewall mode”.
You can’t join this Repl from Firewall Mode.
This Repl was started by someone not in Firewall Mode. If you would like to join, please do one of the following:
• Exit Firewall Mode.
• Ask the creator to open this Repl in Firewall Mode.
I don’t know how long the timeout lasts nor what happens in teams or with multiple users.
Firewalled Replit is simply an alternative to Replit without direct access to the community aspects and not providing Repls with internet access.
Replit physically cannot prevent users from simply accessing the main site. The idea is that the IT administrators at a school would block the regular replit.com domain and only allow access to the firewalledreplit.com domain in order for students to only be able to use the restricted version.
Unfortunately, if you have no means of blocking your students from accessing the regular domain, that renders the firewalled domain near useless.
That said, a partial solution would be to suggest to the team that certain accounts can only access the firewalled domain and cannot access the community features, but again, your students could simply make another account that can.
Ultimately, without the ability to block your students from accessing replit.com, there is nothing you can do.
