Youtube EDU Sign up

[rpettit]

Has anyone been able to sign up for Youtube EDU?

 

We are looking to enable this youtube feature and allow EDU content through our smoothwall filter.

 

After signing in to Youtube for Schools - https://www.youtube.com/schools - We get the below message. Has anyone been able to successfully register their school and get this working?

 

We are aware of the issues with the YouTube for Schools product sign up flow. We realize this is a frustrating experience and thank you for your patience and understanding. Please stay tuned for an update.

[ReBoot]

If you look on the support forums you will see that the sign up process has been broken for months and Youtube don't appear to be doing anything about it. I signed up my school a year or more ago and have a working edufilter code. However, it still doesn't work properly as you are supposed to be able to add videos to private school playlists for use on your network but I can't get this to work.

 

What does work is:

Education homepage

Non-educational videos blocked

Students cannot sign in using their personal accounts

Teachers can have a special account which has unrestricted access

 

Personally I'd forget it until Youtube get their act together and fix the service and signup process. Judging by progress so far this may be some time or never.

[ChrisH]

I just had another go at signing up today and it's in the same state as when I tried 2 months ago.

[dhicks]

Has anyone been able to sign up for Youtube EDU?

 

No - we've been trying to sign up recently too. I was planning to ask a couple of the filtering companies at BETT if they had any idea what was going on with YouTube For Schools - have Google abandoned it, is there a different (better?) mechanism we should be using instead?

[free780]

Its been pretty awful. The YouTube for schools forum has a lot of comments. We have it working but we signed up in 2012. The biggest pain is the link changes for non edu filtered to edu filtered.

[witch]

We had it working for a bit but in the end the HT has decided to allow the staff accessed to the unfiltered proxy as there have been so many problems with it.

[free780]

We allow staff to have the edu filter off. Safety mode is forced on. Students have it enabled.

[PaulBM]

We have it working, but I don't know which account was used to sign up. All I have the ID to put in our gateway device to activate the Edu filter. Without the admin account our Media teacher can't whitelist some advert videos she wants the students to critique.

 

If you guys are struggling to get signed up, I doubt I have a chance to find out how to gain full access to our account.

[dhicks]

I was planning to ask a couple of the filtering companies at BETT if they had any idea what was going on with YouTube For Schools - have Google abandoned it, is there a different (better?) mechanism we should be using instead?

 

Right - I asked Rob Chambers at Lightspeed Systems about this today, and it seems that Google are discontinuing YouTube For Schools. This is because of Google's move to using encryption accross all their services, so YouTube For Schools' URL-rewrite method of enforcing a particular setting won't work any more. A new mechanism is being used by Lightspeed's firmware that uses DNS instead. This new firmware has been the release candidate version, but should be pushed to release today - I haven't had a chance to get back to school and do a firmware update on our Lightspeed device yet, I'll probably know more details after I've done so.

 

I'm sure that people who use other filtering solutions (Smoothwall, etc) will find there is something similar available or in the works for their system.

[localzuk]

Well, if Google are discontinuing Youtube for Schools, it means this school will end up blacklisting Youtube entirely again. *sigh*

[IrritableTech]

I have suspected that YouTube for schools was nearing end of life. We tried to sign up with a generic account back in September and got the error message.

 

We are using it successfully, but using a code attached to my work email which I signed up for probably over a year ago - not ideal but working.

 

I'll be interested to see the Lightspeed solution and see if it is a workable solution - presumably the other big names will follow quickly if it is.

[grant_girdwood]

Right - I asked Rob Chambers at Lightspeed Systems about this today, and it seems that Google are discontinuing YouTube For Schools. This is because of Google's move to using encryption accross all their services, so YouTube For Schools' URL-rewrite method of enforcing a particular setting won't work any more. A new mechanism is being used by Lightspeed's firmware that uses DNS instead. This new firmware has been the release candidate version, but should be pushed to release today - I haven't had a chance to get back to school and do a firmware update on our Lightspeed device yet, I'll probably know more details after I've done so.

 

I'm sure that people who use other filtering solutions (Smoothwall, etc) will find there is something similar available or in the works for their system.

 

Interesting, we've certainly not heard anything about this. I ponder if Rob was getting mixed up with YouTube Safety Mode which you can use the same Google SSL Safe Search DNS trick to enforce YouTube Safety Mode without the need to decrypt the SSL request.

[dhicks]

Interesting, we've certainly not heard anything about this. I ponder if Rob was getting mixed up with YouTube Safety Mode which you can use the same Google SSL Safe Search DNS trick to enforce YouTube Safety Mode without the need to decrypt the SSL request.

 

Any confusion added is probably my fault - I spoke to Lightspeed in the morning at BETT, and had forgotten most of the details by the time I got home. The main part I remember is that YouTube For Schools, using the mechanism it currently uses, is not going to work in the future and that Lightspeed have put a new feature in place for their devices that we can use instead. I'll probably try a firmware update later today, when I'll see how well it works. That's about as much detail as I remember from yesterday, I'm sure reading through some of Rob's posts as linked to above will clarify some more details.

[grant_girdwood]

Any confusion added is probably my fault - I spoke to Lightspeed in the morning at BETT, and had forgotten most of the details by the time I got home. The main part I remember is that YouTube For Schools, using the mechanism it currently uses, is not going to work in the future and that Lightspeed have put a new feature in place for their devices that we can use instead. I'll probably try a firmware update later today, when I'll see how well it works. That's about as much detail as I remember from yesterday, I'm sure reading through some of Rob's posts as linked to above will clarify some more details.

 

Ah the trade show fatigue - I was only down for the one day this year (helps to keep me sane!)

 

It looks like a Light speed specific issue with how they integrate YouTube and their My Big Campus module (Maintenance Advisory: YouTube in My Big Campus – Update (December 3, 2014) | Lightspeed Systems Community Site)

[grant_girdwood]

Just an update, our product manager headed over to Google today @ BETT and it just so happened one of the Google product managers were there

 

The Google PM advised that YouTube for Schools is not going away and that there is a lot of extensive development work being put in to this with a relaunch coming later this year adding lots of new functionality. We brought up the sign up issue and they advised that this is something they are aware of and there are "reasons" for it.

 

Hopefully that answers some questions, I'm rather excited to see what they bring with the relaunch!

 

Cheers,

Grant

[IrritableTech]

I too asked and got much the same response as @grant_girdwood. Something's on its way, but they can't tell us any more.

 

I did tweet one of the Google bigwigs some time ago asking if YouTube videos embedded into google classroom courses could be automatically approved in YouTube for schools. He thought the idea was great and thanked me for it... Hopefully the products will better integrate with each other before too long.

[Mr_Jiminy]

Pretty dreadful support and service IMO.

[grant_girdwood]

I too asked and got much the same response as @grant_girdwood. Something's on its way, but they can't tell us any more.

 

I did tweet one of the Google bigwigs some time ago asking if YouTube videos embedded into google classroom courses could be automatically approved in YouTube for schools. He thought the idea was great and thanked me for it... Hopefully the products will better integrate with each other before too long.

 

Hey Adam,

 

They did say something to our product manager about better methods of getting videos in to YouTube Education, I wasn't there so can't say exactly - will try and find out for you next week once the post BETT fatigue wears off

 

Have a good weekend.

Cheers,

Grant