Hello HN! Replit CEO and cofounder here. When the pandemic hit last year, we start hearing from educators using Replit that Multiplayer has been crucial for their student's continued education but that it was hard to manage a class full of students using it. We sprinted to design and ship a beta of our Teams product optimized for distance learning. We wanted to make something that delivered on the following:
- Helps teachers teach remotely: Features like "Who's Coding" which allows the teachers to see what projects students were working on, helped teachers jump in like they would IRL and, on top of that, be able to leave inline comments and chat with the student.
- Helps students code together: Group projects, Multiplayer, and the fun, creative coding features that we have, like support for graphics, made project-based distance learning a blast for the student.
- Automated and asynchronous workflows. Things like auto-grading using I/O and unit tests, in addition to Threads -- our inline code comments feature -- allow teachers to manage a large classroom and students to get both instant and async feedback on their work.
- Mobile support. We started hearing from students worldwide that they didn't have computers at home to continue learning, so we made our coding environment mobile optimized and it grew 900% in 2020. https://blog.repl.it/mobile
Teachers are reporting that it's a "game-changer" and that it fundamentally changed how they teach coding, so much so that they'll continue to use the same workflow even when they go back to classroom (https://twitter.com/Felienne/status/1346750239751942145).
But we're not just building for teachers, students are reporting that they're enjoying coding more, especially with group projects, and that they're having fun learning. We're engaging researchers to conduct a small-scale study to see if improved outcomes can be borne out in the data.
> We started hearing from students worldwide that they didn't have computers at home to continue learning, so we made our coding environment mobile optimized and it grew 900% in 2020. https://blog.repl.it/mobile
As someone who saw friends struggle to conjure up enough money to buy laptops during the pandemic (with looming socio-economic uncertainty no less), this is simply priceless; especially since it is pretty common for Bay Area companies to be insulated away from the realities of a world afar where even "cheap" Scaleway / DO compute is deemed expensive. Ironically, it is indeed this world afar that is in dire need of realising benefits (especially in terms of lower cost) that only technology can deliver. Thank you very much!
Thank you! We pride ourselves on being more in touch. We have employees in India and Palestine and other places in the world, and some of us use chromebooks as our primary device.
Amazing how Microsoft monopolized a generic word like "Teams". Luckily Replit has a good brand name in education, it's pretty easy to google for, and it grows mostly by word-of-mouth.
Apple “monopolized” the generic fruit “apple” and no one batted an eye (except maybe the Beatles). There’s countless examples of generic words being trademarked.
I don't think the parent comment meant it as some bad evil thing. More like just a factual curiosity, sort of as "huh, damn, pretty interesting how they have managed to do it."
On a personal level, I think the Apple case is a bit different. There is no other technical product that is named Apple, and neither it is inherently the word used to describe what a product or a company does. While Teams definitely falls under the "similar enough" umbrella of words related to the function of the product.
Not that it makes any difference, and, in fact, I think it was pretty clever of MSFT to manage to make that product name work, since I was pretty skeptical of how well it was gonna work at first.
> I don't think the parent comment meant it as some bad evil thing. More like just a factual curiosity, sort of as "huh, damn, pretty interesting how they have managed to do it."
Right. I read it as that too, but I see I may have come off too strong. I was agreeing with OP while mentioning that others have done it as well.
Hey @amasad! One of my friends is a high school CS teacher, and I've been helping design some projects for their class using Repl.it. One thing I've been looking for, is there a way to publish packages the students can import in their project? It seems like from most of the examples if we want to provide code to the students the only supported way is just including all the source code in the template. I'd really like a way to publish a Repl.it namespaced package that the students can just import, which I can update at any time.
One example: a project where students can make a bot to play a board game. We want to provide all of the client/connection logic for them so they just write the bot part. We can't easily update the source files if we need to change it after they started the template. Also some kids may edit the files and cause it to not work.
FYI, some teachers were unhappy with the shutting down of the classroom feature on repl.it and the replacing it with Teams for education.
Some were unhappy after having everything setup in classroom, then had to migrate to teams. Some were unhappy it wasn't free. Some were unhappy it was free only for basically a semester, which won't last a full AP CS A course (so if they were in a rush to start, they'd be stuck having to pay, or else they'd have to switch mid-course, which is hard, and if the school refuses to pay because it's not budgeted, then stuck to pay means out of own pocket.).
Of course you have to cheerlead your product. That's understandable. THought you'd like to know some feedback anyway.
We fixed the migration pathway so if you haven’t tried recently, give it a shot. If you have budget issues happy to give you the new product for free. Email me anytime: amjad@repl.it
I've been helping teach high school CS classes for years, and even just being able to use some free accounts with students to share code and workspaces has been flawlessly simple. I've always (even pre-pandemic) been a remote instructor, and Repl.it has been one of my best tool experiences. Thanks for the great work!
This looks very useful. I usually teach 20 to 30 students at a time and always struggle to provide like by line feedback. This should help.
For a slightly different use case, I wrote https://postcell.io/ for my classes. We use mostly Jupyter notebooks in my class and I mark certain cells with a special magic command. When students execute code in that cell, it is sent up to my server and I can see every student’s submission. I turn off student names and share the screen with the class. We then go through all the variations of answers and talk about the differences.
Although anyone can use it, the interface is probably a bit rough right now.
Although I love the cool features, I'm worried this could potentially exacerbate situations where students already feel like they're "being watched" while learning remotely (i.e. being forced to have their camera on constantly while in class). I could imagine some students feeling anxious about having to complete assignments on a platform like this, where every step of their incompetence (due to their nascent programming skills) is available for the teacher to see.
Although I firmly believe the tech is cool and useful, how helpful it is will come down to classroom policies.
While this sounds plausible, fortunately it doesn't seem to be the case. We're hearing is that it's both improving student outcomes and making coding more fun and exciting for students, so much so that they continue coding after their class. This came in recently from a CS teacher in Mexico City:
> I am a CS teacher at a public high school in Mexico City, and I am fortunate to use Repl.it since the past October. My remote classes have gone so good thanks to Repl.it, my students have been learning a lot by working with your platform. They have even given me a C language code made in Repl.it as a present on my birthday.
We're also working with researchers to conduct a small study to see if this can be borne out in outcomes data.
As a high school CS student, I'm sure some students will feel the pressure to code and fear of embarrassment, especially if the whole class is set to see progress. Perhaps an option to anonymize the names to the other students if it is a group project?
We use repl.it for students without access to BlueJ and it works great. In fact, I will be messaging this to my AP CSA teacher with this because this looks absolutely game-changing.
For student learning, a full IDE in a browser that has a very low barrier to entry is very important. Half of my AP CSA class uses chromebooks exclusively and thus have no access to real IDE's. since this is for education I think it's very beneficial there.
Elsewhere, yeah, a full IDE is probably better. But this definitely has a use case IMO.
For student learning, it depends on your philosophy, intent, or goals.
For APCSA students, especially those who can take more CS courses before/after the APCSA exam course... these are high school level students. There's no reason why they can't be using a real IDE (e.g. Eclipse, or whatever you like), learning Java in a terminal, and learn to write real GUIs (e.g. Swing, or whatever you like) [1].
Yeah I know... Java, Swing, Eclipse... Look, it's AP CS A. Java is the language of instruction. No choice. But we can make the best of it. Students can learn using real tools.
In high school wood shop class, they teach what the pros use, more or less. Real hammers. Real drill presses.
That's not to say Repl.it is purely a toy tool. Of course you can make real things using non-pro tools too, ikea screwdrivers, dollar store saws, etc. But it depends on your teaching philosophy, goals, and resources. Some high school students are a few years away from working, coding, in industry --- why not learn real IDEs if it's available?
You're right, there's definitely a use case for Repl.it. Chromebooks... I'm sorry for your situation. Even a cheap laptop with Windows or Linux nowadays is enough to learn Java with Netbeans and the command line. If my class all had chromebooks, I'd probably jump on REpl.it too.
But if students have a non-locked-down OS, seems to me learning the real deal is better for the student. It's not just the IDE and coding in it. It's the entire ecosystem students get to be exposed to. Get stuck on something, jump in the command line. Learn git in bash. Play with maven. It's a rich, real, authentic environment to learn in. Stuck in the browser means only getting what the web site provides.
But that's old school thinking. I suspect the world of primary and secondary CS education will move more and more into REpl.it style web based tools. Here's why:
Everything's getting locked down, and people are busy.
If a student comes and says they have trouble installing Java in Windows, it's easier to just say... go to ReplIt.
If a school board is downsizing / rightsizing / cloud-ifying their I.T., they might say they won't allow/support/install Eclipse on school PCs anymore, because it takes too much technician time to support it, or it opens up security issues to allow arbitrary code from students to run, or they want to replace everything with Chromebooks, or just do it in the cloud...whatever. What's a teacher to do? Replit.
Students comes with a Mac, all locked down, has trouble even running example or utility programs from the teacher because of notarization? Replit.
Student has no desktop/laptop. School does'nt have a chromebook to lend out. But probably student still has a mobile device! Replit.
As coding education becomes more widespread, like math before it, more and more classes will be taught by teachers who are not experts in coding, possibly not even by a hobbyist coder, maybe not even by someone who likes code. It'll be taught by an English / math/ bio / P.E. teacher who needs a class to round out their 1.0 FTE. Maybe supported by an expert CS teacher, maybe, but at some point everyone's busy. So much easier to just use repl.it. Gives students some activities to do.
And how's the social teacher who's never seen a terminal supposed to help troubleshoot classpath problems in Java on a student's computer? or on a school computer they have no admin access to because... I.T.? That teacher may be very capable, but who has the time anyway? Replit with constrained templates and projects will be very very helpful.
Sorry this is so long...
tldr. If students have a non-locked-down OS, seems to me learning the real deal is better for the student. But due to everything getting locked down, economic reasons, and teachers/people/technicians being just too busy, the trend in primary/secondary CS education will be towards more web based platforms... because it's better for the teachers/administrators/I.T./wallet.
I joked that schools that are serious about teaching CS should just get a rack with *NIX machines properly configured and networked together and have everyone serious enough ssh/remote to them. For the students that just wished ReplIt could let them do that one thing it can't...
With regular back-up so that when a student inevitably mess up beyond repair (rogue rm or dd command or something modifying his path) he can time-machine like roll back to a previous version.
Then you get to enjoy the show. Someone will inevitably start pen-testing the school. Why is one machine constantly maxed-out? Is that a Quake server they are running? Oh they have their own chat client/protocol now, interesting. Basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incompatible_Timesharing_Syste...
I basically did that by using Oracle's always free VPS [1] and we set up a jitsi instance. We did our Scholastic Bowl practices over it. But Oracle just killed my VM and said "System terminated your account and unfortunately we can't reactivate or restore the account. Thank youfor chatting with us. Have a good day". Should have seen it coming from Oracle...
Your tl/dr is spot-on. The critical resource is teachers' and students' time.
Keep in mind, we're talking about teaching students in a class, with a curriculum.
This is not high-value open ended learning with real tools. This is basic skill training exercises.
I speak from the experience of watching a teacher struggle with multiple students' python dependencies for the first two weeks of class. This was with a set of (supposedly) homogenous school-issued laptops. After switching to repl.it, all that hassle just disappeared.
> There's no reason why they can't be using a real IDE (e.g. Eclipse, or whatever you like), learning Java in a terminal, and learn to write real GUIs (e.g. Swing, or whatever you like).
BlueJ is incompatible with Chromebooks, unfortunately.
> Some high school students are a few years away from working, coding, in industry --- why not learn real IDEs if it's available?
Very true, unfortunately BlueJ is mandated by Advanced Placement and the tests are on paper (!) but I always prefer a full IDE.
>But if students have a non-locked-down OS, seems to me learning the real deal is better for the student. It's not just the IDE and coding in it. It's the entire ecosystem students get to be exposed to. Get stuck on something, jump in the command line. Learn git in bash. Play with maven. It's a rich, real, authentic environment to learn in. Stuck in the browser means only getting what the web site provides.
Unfortunately, the trend is becoming online. I hope the teachers explain that these tools are good for learning but never outside of a learning environment. It's like scratch: you'd never teach it to actual CS students but for feeling out an interest in CS it's pretty good.
>If a student comes and says they have trouble installing Java in Windows, it's easier to just say... go to ReplIt.
If an AP CSA student can't install Java... that doesn't bode well for their general computing knowledge. Then again AP CSA isn't super high level. We just learned about `extends` sub/superclasses in java, and we're pretty far into the course.
>As coding education becomes more widespread, like math before it, more and more classes will be taught by teachers who are not experts in coding, possibly not even by a hobbyist coder, maybe not even by someone who likes code. It'll be taught by an English / math/ bio / P.E. teacher who needs a class to round out their 1.0 FTE.
Agree. My AP CSA teacher is very qualified but I've seen that trend in plenty of other lower-level computing classes in MS and HS like "computer applications" class and "cybersec fundamentals".
>tldr. If students have a non-locked-down OS, seems to me learning the real deal is better for the student. But due to everything getting locked down, economic reasons, and teachers/people/technicians being just too busy, the trend in primary/secondary CS education will be towards more web based platforms... because it's better for the teachers/administrators/I.T./wallet.
Sigh, I just hope this doesn't affect the education negatively like it sounds like it will...
Where did you see that? It's not mandated. My AP students use Netbeans or Eclipse or IDEA (their choice). I have an AP approved syllabus that I wrote myself based on the College Board AP course and exam description. If you use the Blue Pellican Java textbook, I recall it teaches BlueJ. But other approved textbooks don't.
> If an AP CSA student can't install Java... that doesn't bode well for their general computing knowledge
Well, if they use Replit, they'd never know they didn't know! And they'd never get a chance to learn to troubleshoot. They'd never learn general computing knowledge. But that's part of my "ecosystem" point.
> Sigh, I just hope this doesn't affect the education negatively like it sounds like it will...
I think you and I are on the same wavelength here. I don't know if education will be affected negatively, but it'll be more "specialized". Students 10 years ago at my school learned Linux, MongoDB (why not? lol), Java, Eclipse, bash, git, etc. Because of some of the things I noted, they now learn... Java in Eclipse. 10 years from now, they'll learn... to code in Replit.
Maybe that's just how it goes. 100 years ago, math students learned to make paper and ink (did they? was that 500 years ago? I don't know). Now they learn math. 100 years from now, they learn math code in coq on Replit (lol).
My AP teacher mandates the use of BlueJ, I was under the impression it was AP. I asked if I could use another full IDE because the keybinds in BlueJ suck, he said no because the Intellisense/other smart features may make it easier and I won't be able to use it on the exam. Which is sort of fair I suppose.
>Well, if they use Replit, they'd never know they didn't know! And they'd never get a chance to learn to troubleshoot. They'd never learn general computing knowledge. But that's part of my "ecosystem" point.
Very true.
> Students 10 years ago at my school learned Linux, MongoDB (why not? lol), Java, Eclipse, bash, git, etc
That makes me glad that I'm learning with good tools. I hope the trend doesn't continue to fully learning college courses in a browser. :/
Then again, I'm literally in high school hating on the new-fangled tools...
> he said no because the Intellisense/other smart features may make it easier and I won't be able to use it on the exam. Which is sort of fair I suppose.
The exam's done wrong. Intellisense mostly gives you navigation in a big project (shouldn't need that in a written test) and method name auto-complete.
Remembering it's ToString() and not tostring() or PrintAsString() is pointless. What matters is computational thinking.
> I hope the trend doesn't continue to fully learning college courses in a browser. :/
Some colleges will, for sure. Probably not the good ones.
> Then again, I'm literally in high school hating on the new-fangled tools...
For me at least, pair programming using an IDE that allows both us to type in the same document simultaneously is pretty awesome. For one thing, modern screen resolutions are much higher than they used to be, and many times I just can't read the font size somebody is sharing in.
Also, I've found that attempting to describe what you're thinking about changing remotely is nowhere near as effective as typing. While this can definitely be accomplished simply by passing control back and forth, it's much easier to just be able to type with a separate cursor.
Huh, I think I'm going to go take a look at current state of those plugins again, thanks for jogging my memory. :)
I have a suspicion that many many prospective computer science students go to other majors because they can’t set up their development environment in their first CS class, even though they might be perfectly capable of coding. Getting all sorts of things (dependencies) in the right place (paths) is always a pain, but when you’re getting started it helps to not have that be a problem. I think tools like repl help remove that barrier to entry into the field.
We are using nbgrader[0] to handle the labs of our students, while we are happy with nbgrader, from the videos, Teams for Education look so much nicer to use.
I also agree that using tools centered on coding offer a really nice experience for both students and teachers.
Is it possible to disable the "Talk" feature for Teams for Education accounts? This social media like feature actually makes it less interesting to use for a coding clubs for younger kids.
- Helps teachers teach remotely: Features like "Who's Coding" which allows the teachers to see what projects students were working on, helped teachers jump in like they would IRL and, on top of that, be able to leave inline comments and chat with the student.
- Helps students code together: Group projects, Multiplayer, and the fun, creative coding features that we have, like support for graphics, made project-based distance learning a blast for the student.
- Automated and asynchronous workflows. Things like auto-grading using I/O and unit tests, in addition to Threads -- our inline code comments feature -- allow teachers to manage a large classroom and students to get both instant and async feedback on their work.
- Mobile support. We started hearing from students worldwide that they didn't have computers at home to continue learning, so we made our coding environment mobile optimized and it grew 900% in 2020. https://blog.repl.it/mobile
Teachers are reporting that it's a "game-changer" and that it fundamentally changed how they teach coding, so much so that they'll continue to use the same workflow even when they go back to classroom (https://twitter.com/Felienne/status/1346750239751942145).
But we're not just building for teachers, students are reporting that they're enjoying coding more, especially with group projects, and that they're having fun learning. We're engaging researchers to conduct a small-scale study to see if improved outcomes can be borne out in the data.
Happy to answer questions! More info on our blog: https://blog.repl.it/teams_release