For Schools & IT Administrators

About Shard Learning

Shard Learning is a curriculum-aligned classroom learning platform. Our founding team is entirely teachers and former teachers; including an author of the Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies, the Vice President of the Educational Computing Association of WA, and an experienced software engineer with a background in teaching and school leadership.

The platform provides interactive lessons, real-time teacher dashboards, and student learning tools.

The majority of our users are minors under the age of 18, and we treat all student data with the heightened care appropriate for children's personal information. See our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for full details.

Domains to Allowlist

Please allowlist the following domains. All traffic uses port 443 only — HTTPS for standard requests and WebSocket Secure (WSS) for real-time Classroom Mode. No non-standard ports are required.

A wildcard allowlist for *.shardlearning.com will cover all current and future subdomains and is the recommended approach.

Classroom Mode & WebSocket

Classroom Mode lets teachers drive a synchronised lesson experience — controlling which slide students see, enabling interactive components in sequence, and viewing live student engagement — all in real time.

This feature uses WebSocket Secure (WSS), a persistent encrypted connection that runs over port 443 (the same port as HTTPS). The WebSocket domain is ws.shardlearning.com.

Some school content filters block WebSocket connections even when HTTPS to the same domain is permitted. If teachers see a "Classroom Mode is blocked on this network" message in the teacher portal, your content filter is likely blocking WSS to ws.shardlearning.com.

Microsoft and Google Sign-In

Teachers and students sign in to Shard Learning with the school account they already have, either Microsoft or Google. There is no separate Shard Learning password to issue or reset.

Many schools configure their Microsoft Entra tenant so that staff and students cannot approve new applications by themselves. On those tenants, the first person who tries to sign in with Microsoft sees a screen headed "Need admin approval" and cannot go any further. That screen is a policy setting in your tenant rather than a fault, and it is cleared by a one-time approval from an administrator.

What Shard Learning asks for

We request the three standard OpenID Connect sign-in permissions and nothing else:

Approving Shard Learning in Microsoft Entra

A Global Administrator, Application Administrator, or Cloud Application Administrator can approve Shard Learning for the whole school once. Either method works:

• Open the approval link below while signed in as an administrator, review the permissions, and accept.
• Or, in the Microsoft Entra admin centre, go to Enterprise applications, find Shard Learning Auth, open Permissions, and choose Grant admin consent. The application appears in that list only after somebody at your school has attempted to sign in.

Approval is needed once per school. After it is granted, every teacher and student in your tenant can sign in normally.

Google Workspace

Google Workspace schools do not usually need an equivalent step, as sign-in works by default. If your Workspace restricts third-party sign-in, allow Shard Learning in the Google Admin console under Security, then API controls.

Email Template: Microsoft Sign-In Approval

If your teachers are seeing the "Need admin approval" screen, you can copy the template below and send it to whoever administers your school's Microsoft tenant.

Subject: Approval request for Shard Learning sign-in (Microsoft Entra)

Dear IT Administrator,

Our teachers use Shard Learning (shardlearning.com), an Australian
curriculum-aligned digital technologies education platform. We sign in
with our existing school Microsoft accounts.

When we try to sign in, we see a "Need admin approval" message, so the
application needs to be approved for our tenant by an administrator.

Application details:
  Name                    Shard Learning Auth
  Application (client) ID 6204f146-d170-4dde-bd8b-e849fba1f0c4
  Publisher               Shard Learning Pty Ltd

Permissions requested (sign-in only):
  openid   Confirms the sign-in and identifies the account
  email    The account's email address, used to identify the user
  profile  Display name, so teachers see real names in class lists

The application requests no access to files, mailboxes, calendars,
Teams content, or directory listings. The permissions are delegated,
so they apply only to the person signing in.

To approve for the whole school, either open this link while signed in
as an administrator:

  https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/adminconsent?client_id=6204f146-d170-4dde-bd8b-e849fba1f0c4

or, in the Microsoft Entra admin centre, go to Enterprise applications,
find Shard Learning Auth, open Permissions, and choose Grant admin
consent.

Approval is only needed once for the school.

For questions or further assistance, please contact Shard Learning at
official@shardlearning.com.

Thank you,
[Your name]

IT Email Template

If you need to request an allowlist update from your IT team, you can copy and send the template below.

Subject: Allowlist request for Shard Learning educational platform

Dear IT Administrator,

Our teachers use Shard Learning (shardlearning.com), an Australian
curriculum-aligned digital technologies education platform. The
platform's Classroom Mode feature uses secure WebSocket connections
(WSS on port 443) for real-time lesson delivery, which appears to be
blocked on our school network.

Could you please allowlist the following domains:

Recommended (covers all current and future services):
  *.shardlearning.com

If you prefer to allowlist specific domains only:
  shardlearning.com          — Main website
  auth.shardlearning.com     — Student and teacher login
  teacher.shardlearning.com  — Teacher portal
  student.shardlearning.com  — Student learning portal
  api.shardlearning.com      — Application API (HTTPS, port 443)
  ws.shardlearning.com       — Classroom Mode real-time feature
                              (WebSocket Secure / WSS, port 443)

All connections use port 443 only. WebSocket Secure (WSS) uses the
same port as HTTPS — no non-standard ports are required.

For questions or further assistance, please contact Shard Learning at
official@shardlearning.com.

Thank you,
[Your name]

Need Help?

If your school's content filter is blocking Shard Learning, or if you have questions about our platform, please contact us at official@shardlearning.com and we'll work with your IT team to get it resolved.