Does your internet security allow staff to watch help guide videos?

[Schoolcomms]

We’re looking at creating video help guides for use by school administrators who use Schoolcomms. Is there likely to be an issue with staff being able to view videos, due to the levels of school internet security?

 

We currently use YouTube and Vimeo. Would staff in your school be able to view these?

 

Any other ideas...?

Edited May 15, 2015 by Schoolcomms

[JLambert97]

You could always host them on their own website

[Norphy]

He could but why host something as space and bandwidth hungry as video and pay for the privilege when Youtube and the like will host it for free?

 

Obviously I can't speak for all schools but we allow blanket access to YouTube here. We are, however, a sixth form college.

[jamesfed]

YouTube allowed for staff here with no issues - not that I use your products but please don't use some horrible flash player that doesn't work half the time if you go with self hosted!

[vikpaw]

No issue with security, big issue with bandwidth. Youtube is a hog, and so we have smoothwall to help smooth ( ) things out.

 

I think a youtube channel is a good way to go forward - as people can subscribe and you can use it for more than just training, product demos / marketing could also have a place. Admins are likely to have workarounds for security or like, some work all day and night so be able to access out of hours if required.

 

It would be useful, for those who do have problems with access to provide downloadable versions. One of the solutions some staff use (rightly/wrongly) to workaround the bandwidth issue is to download offline, so doing it for them would be handy and saves using dodgy software.

[CAM]

Blocked here.

[Edu-IT]

We allow YouTube.

[JJonas]

We allow Youtube

[pete]

Allowed for staff provided the content is suitable. Comments aren't displayed for obvious reasons.

 

So long as your channel is about an MIS and doesn't attract odd suggested videos, you should be fine.

[dhicks]

We currently use YouTube and Vimeo. Would staff in your school be able to view these?

 

We allow YouTube and Vimeo, although our filter (Lightspeed) does enforce Youtube's Safe Search mode at all times, so nothing that Youtube sees as "unsafe" will be viewable. Until Google get Youtube For Schools sorted out there's not much we can do about that - we can't enable individual Youtube videos at the moment.

 

Under "other ideas", if it's any help, our VLE (Firefly) lets page creators embed both Youtube and Vimeo clips in a page. I don't know if it's possible to provide a handy Firefly (or other VLE) compatible set of pages / lessons all handily packaged so you simply import them, ready to assign as exercises to people.

[Schoolcomms]

Thanks for everyone's feedback. So it looks like YouTube will be a goer - though there will be some limitation on access by some schools. And I think we'll have a feedback/'rate this page' on the video link page on the website so that we can get a feel for the number of schools who can't access it. We'll continue with written help-guides too.

 

And of course there's our phone Support/Training team - but we're trying to help them maintain their call answer target of 90 seconds by offering good online alternatives :-)

 

Many thanks

 

Kirsty

[vikpaw]

Here's some they made earlier :

https://www.youtube.com/user/Schoolcomms/