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.
