Do you allow youtube in your school?

[Ben_Stanton]

Sorry if there has been a poll on this before, but I couldn't find one (or at least a recent one). Please delete and redirect me if this is the case.

 

We are opting for a BYOD strategy in our school. This is complimented very well by our new shiny cross-platform VLE (Firefly). Staff are keen, beavering away building bundles of content and resources (i'm quite impressed, never thought i'd see such enthusiasm). However, there are lots of youtube clips being added (understandably). This isn't a problem if the teacher is showing this in class (teachers have access to youtube, student do not). But, once the students are asked to watch it in their own time - they cannot (if in school) because of the block.

 

We have been toying with the idea of unblocking youtube across the school. The idea of this poll is to get an idea on the general feeling amongst you guys and how other schools view or achieve this.

 

We have looked at Youtube for school but it really doesn't suit our needs (or work particularly well). I don't want to burden a particular member of IT staff to be a 'youtube monitor' and have to deal with adding videos to a whitelist. I also feel this approach will stem the flow of great content currently being uploaded by the staff. I haven't found any other suitable way of achieving what we want - please let me know if you have!

 

Unfortunately, our current webfilter (barracuda) does not have the ability to block the comments section of youtube so we'd have to find a way of doing that separately. I am also aware of the bandwidth implications so no need to mention that in any comments. Contructive comments greatly appreciated (not that they aren't ever). Did you inform parents, or get their consent? Did you write a specific policy? Do you monitor and sanction?

 

Demographic;

We are a small single-sex independent school of 200 girls, Year 7 - Year 13.

Edited June 17, 2014 by Ben_Stanton

[Grey-gear]

Yes to a point, where I work it is unblocked at lunch before school and after school but in lessons it's blocked via impero to all KS3 and KS4 students unless a request is made from a teacher to unblock it. Sixth form can uses it as well as all staff.

[mdench]

We allow youtube here for Staff and some students. Those students who require access to Youtube require their teacher to email us a list of students in their class which we will then allow to the access policy. This stops kids walking in and giving the generic reason of "revision". This was a decision made by our SLT we may look at opening this up to the whole of our Sixth Form Students. I doubt we would open it to the whole school just because it makes it difficult to monitor the viewing of all 1500 students. But if SLT want to do that eventually I'm sure we will have to come up with a system to monitor its useage.

[abillybob]

Only to staff currently but students will come to follow but they will be locked down you EducationalYouTube!

[Sagima]

We allow youtube clips individually as they are requested. We are probably moving to allowing youtube for the 6th form in the new academic year but that still hasn't been formalised

[synaesthesia]

Controlled. It's blocked by default for students, allowed for 6th form and staff. It's allowed for students upon request (teacher requests to use it, we allow it via Impero).

Certain areas have it allowed regardless of user, such as the media and music departments.

[Ben_Stanton]

Thanks for the feedback guys,

 

However, I forgot to add the critical poll option - Unblocked for Staff AND Students. Can't edit the poll so if a mod could, that would be great.

 

Ta

[pcstru]

Secondary School : Unblocked here for Staff and Students.

[bclarke]

Unblocked for staff and students. I am coming round to the thought that blocking all this stuff is only making the children more vulnerable to problems on the internet when they move on to internet that isn't filtered either at home or elsewhere. Perhaps education and monitoring rather than blanket blocks. If you have BYOD and you block everything on your internet how do you encourage them to stay on yours and be monitored rather than using 3G or open hotspots.

 

Just a thought.

[Ben_Stanton]

Unblocked for staff and students. I am coming round to the thought that blocking all this stuff is only making the children more vulnerable to problems on the internet when they move on to internet that isn't filtered either at home or elsewhere. Perhaps education and monitoring rather than blanket blocks. If you have BYOD and you block everything on your internet how do you encourage them to stay on yours and be monitored rather than using 3G or open hotspots.

 

Just a thought.

 

Exactly my thoughts. They will find a way around it in school (possibly harming your systems) or just wait until they go home (or switch off wifi and go 3G). I appreciate we also have a duty of care.

Edited June 17, 2014 by Ben_Stanton

[Gaz]

We allow it for both and police it. Anyone caught abusing it will be denied access.

 

I have tried YouTube edu but it was more trouble than it was worth resulting in a lot of support requests for videos to be added.

[Ben_Stanton]

Hi mods @SYNACK @plexer, can you edit and add an option please (ta muchly);

 

Unblocked for Staff AND Students

Edited June 17, 2014 by Ben_Stanton

[Ben_Stanton]

Thank you

[Irazmus]

Unblocked for staff, YouTube Edu enforced for pupils by county.

 

Also, poll updated.

[dave.81]

Ours changes through the day, Staff and 6th Form have access during the day, at 6pm all in years 8 and above have access as well being a boarding school this includes facebook, youtube etc....

[localzuk]

We use Youtube for Education here, unfiltering individual videos for use on request. This applies to everyone - staff and students, based on issues in the past with teachers accidentally showing inappropriate videos.

 

About 5% of requested videos get denied.

[clareq]

We use Bloxx, which has a quota system. Staff have unfettered access to youtube, KS3 and 4 are blocked, KS5 have a quota of an hour a day - they can use that quota on youtube, facebook and other similar sites. Staff have the hour a day quota for facebook and other social media sites. No-one has been able to justify needing more time.

Youtube also has safe search enabled for all, so inappropriate comments are blocked.

[JRowley]

We previously only blocked YouTube on the request of the teacher, however following a minor incident (where a student refused to work unless they could listen to music via YouTube) a vote was taken by the teaching staff and it is now blocked unless specifically requested by the teacher (so the complete reverse). The exceptions being Sixth form students and staff who can access it whenever/wherever.

[mrbios]

Allowed for Staff, allowed for students in ICT rooms, but blocked for students everywhere else. It's deemed a resource too good to block.

 

Youtube for schools is a complete piece of junk that we gave up on before it even got going...in our opinion.

Edited June 17, 2014 by mrbios

[jmak]

Allowed for staff, blocked for pupils, but our VLE allows staff to upload* YouTube content which the pupils can then watch without any change to the filtering. Even better, it strips out all of the contents and adverts and suggested other videos. We use eschools based vle, but last year I tried My Big Campus which is a free offering from Lightspeed (you don't need to be a customer to get it for free). To be honest, I'm surprised Firefly doesn't have a similar feature.

*Uploading just involves pasting the URL straight from YouTube into a box.

[RichCowell]

We have it blocked for students, but allowed for staff... but unblock it for students if requested by the teacher - done easily as and when needed on a room by room basis via Impero...

 

We looked at YouTube for schools too, but definitely too restrictive... I think if there was an option for more than one account to have permission to add videos for student viewing it wouldn't be too bad... We've even got a rule in the Sophos UTM so the music department PCs can access YouTube off YouTube for Schools if we enable it, but didn't bother at all in the end... I hope they improve it as it'd be one less thing to manage if that worked like it should/could...

[robjduk]

Youtube education for years 7-11 and full access to 12&13. Media studies have their macs on full youtube too (which I oppose).

[rdk]

We are a girl's secondary with a 1:1 laptop program with YouTube unblocked for everyone. When we made the initial decision couple of years ago it was on a see how it went basis. The reasons for blocking were mainly regarding time wasting in class and bandwidth issues rather than the possibility of viewing inappropriate sites - these seem to be common reasons here in Australia. I'm sure boys would pose different issues. Each student has a daily download limit (can't recall what it is), and other than a brief spike when it was first unblocked we've had no issues.

 

When our teachers return from conferences and meetings and hear that some schools still have YouTube blocked the usual comment is "how can you teach like that?"

[laserblazer]

We have it unblocked for staff and pupils. The biggest problem is that pupils think it is their God given right to listen to music whilst doing their work. This would not be a problem if they got on with their work instead of spending the lesson looking on youtube. It annoys me, especially when I go into a suite and there are a group of lads around one computer sniggering. But, if that's ok with the teacher!

 

Youtube is a great teaching tool, without it I would have just taken far more screws out of a Toshiba laptop that needed. I do think that it is more useful in the classroom than the ICT suite. Watching the Monty Python clip is a great way to start the Romans module.

[woody]

Blocked for Students, allowed for Staff. Was unblocked for 6th form but they wasted so much time abusing it that we were asked by teachers to block it again.

 

We are looking into using Youtube for Schools - can I ask what issues people have had with it and why they don't like it?

 

Thanks