Hello Everyone,
Our team is aware of an issue some school networks and connected devices are experiencing that prevents AppLab levels with a dataset loaded from working. We believe this may have been caused by a change in the domain name management for the service we use to handle App Lab’s data system. We are actively investigating this problem.
You can test if this issue applies to your school network by logging on to your school network and attempting to load any level that has a dataset loaded (example). If you discover that this level will not load, please get in touch with your IT department to update your school’s firewall settings or device policies. Specifically, our App Lab data system needs to be able to connect to and initiate an Upgrade request on *.firebaseio.com domains on HTTPS port 443 and can maintain a secure WebSocket (WSS) connection for up to 5 minutes.
In addition, please let us know that this issue is affecting your school by writing in to support@code.org and let us know if you school uses a 3rd party company to block traffic to specific domains.
We know that many of you are working on Unit 5, where students start to use datasets in their programs. If this issue causes you to rearrange your plan for the week, consider working on lessons from Unit 6 - Algorithms with your students until this issue gets resolved.
We will update you here as our team discovers more about the nature of this issue and any fixes. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions!
Ken