How do you allow programming in this current climate?

[SpaceInvader83]

Hi all,

 

How do you all allow KS4, A-Level students access to programming languages whilst securing your systems with application whitelisting? Are you all using online IDE's?

[mavhc]

End game is a zero trust network, treat every device as if it's a random computer on the internet. Authenticate the device, and the user, for any network access at all. No device gets special privileges because it's on the LAN.

 

Do all your computers have access to all your devices/servers? Do you need to use the special computer to access the backups, hypervisors, servers, switches, routers, wifi?

 

Who can access what is a problem your firewall has probably already solved, different users have different internet access rights. What did you do about the non client devices though? Did you allow the photocopier to access everything because it didn't support NTLM? etc etc

[kennysarmy]

Our IT teachers have been impressed with https://replit.com/

 

So much so that we don't bother with a sandbox environment anymore.

[Rob_D]

We use recyclable VDI sessions. Students have full access to the machine and a server share to save work, but not the rest of the network.

[jthompson]

We've been using VirtualBox for a while. Immutable VHDs, no network connectivity, VirtualBox GUI locked down. They can do what they like/need in the guest OS. The shared folders feature of VirtualBox allows students access to their user area without the guest having any network connectivity. AppLocker, etc. on the host will prevent them running any of their work outside of the VM.

 

Deployment is a bit of a pig, but once done it seems to work well and we don't have to think or worry about it.

[mavhc]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/windows-sandbox/windows-sandbox-overview

[flyinghaggis]

We've been using VirtualBox for a while. Immutable VHDs, no network connectivity, VirtualBox GUI locked down. They can do what they like/need in the guest OS. The shared folders feature of VirtualBox allows students access to their user area without the guest having any network connectivity. AppLocker, etc. on the host will prevent them running any of their work outside of the VM.

 

Deployment is a bit of a pig, but once done it seems to work well and we don't have to think or worry about it.

 

We've rolled VirtualBox out here with the above setup. It generally works well but the staff still grumble occasionally about having to transfer stuff back/forth between the VM and host and find the lack of online connectivity for the VM awkward.

 

Some kind of online/cloud IDE like https://replit.com/ sounds like the ideal setup IMO.

Edited May 11, 2021 by flyinghaggis

[jthompson]

Some kind of online/cloud IDE like https://replit.com/ sounds like the ideal setup IMO.

 

I would tend to agree. More conducive to homework, etc.

[SpaceInvader83]

Thanks for all the replies, https://replit.com looks great and would certainly be my first choice.

[BOOT]

There's always Azure..

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/lab-services/lab-services-overview

[dhicks]

Our IT teachers have been impressed with https://replit.com/

 

They just released a snazzy new "apps" feature yesterday:

 

https://blog.replit.com/apps

 

It's starting to look like a pretty comprehensive development envrironment, similar to Glitch (https://glitch.com) or Roblox (https://www.roblox.com).

 

Replit runs, if I understand correctly, in the browser itself, having implemented a browser-based interpreter for any language they support, so for instance your Python code runs in the browser rather than on a server. If you want something that runs on a curated server instance (all the library installs taken care of for you) then maybe try PythonAnywhere (https://www.pythonanywhere.com), although I'd have thought that would be less apppropriate for IT lesson type stuff.

[mrnoisy]

Azure labs, we have been using this for about 3 years, it costs us approx £100 per month to run 3 virtual suites of 60 devices.

[synaesthesia]

We're using a mixture of repl.it and VBox - the latter gives a far more true to life system to work with which appears quite appreciated.

[fiza]

Have any schools that use https://replit.com/ found that it crashes? Our IT Teachers are saying that the site crashes when they try to use it with a few classes.

[Rob_D]

I hope no-one minds my reviving this old thread.

 

How are the school's that use replit doing exams? When I floated this with the IT teachers the main question was about being able to do exams where the students can't have internet access.

[paulkerton]

I hope no-one minds my reviving this old thread.

 

How are the school's that use replit doing exams? When I floated this with the IT teachers the main question was about being able to do exams where the students can't have internet access.

We're investigating using it inside ChromEx, as websites can be added as a ChromEx resource. It hasn't been brought up by IT as of yet though.

[Oaktech]

My former employer has just moved from the VBox environment I set up *cough*8YearsAgo* cough* to Replit.

[mavhc]

The Edexcel 2020 CS paper 2 requires no internet access, and access to the standard IDE the students used during their lessons.

[paulkerton]

The Edexcel 2020 CS paper 2 requires no internet access, and access to the standard IDE the students used during their lessons.

 

Which is a bit of a quandry if the IDE students use during their lessons is internet based.

[mavhc]

Better liaise with the examination body to ensure you're all on the same page

[paulkerton]

Better liaise with the examination body to ensure you're all on the same page

Or tell them how backwards it is in the 21st Century to ask students to develop offline?

Let alone make their exams into some kind of speed coding event!

[mavhc]

These are people who mostly test people on paper and think memorisation is the key to being good at life. It's their business model not to move to the 21st century.

 

On the plus side at least they're not using a fake language, or fake programming environment, or making you code on paper. And you can access the built in help file.

[Rob_D]

So how are all the schools said they use replit dealing with exams? Or are the courses you use it for not exam based?