Mathswatch video's

[nicholab]

Has any one else found a way round accessing Mathswatch video's using Lighspeed filtering? The video's for this site are hosted on Vimeo and there does not seem a safe way of providing access to this video's.

 

Does anyone have any thought on this? Mathswatch are saying no one else has reported this issue.

[chinesewhispers]

We've reported the same. As soon as I was passed the details of the new system, looked at the source and saw Vimeo all over it, I told maths to not hold out too much hope.

 

I contacted maths watch and they sent me a vast list of individual clip urls, and done root urls to white list. When I went back to them and suggested whitelisting vimeo was not a great idea, they acknowledged, said they were looking on to it, and that the old site could be used for now.

 

The more people that get in touch with them, the better.

 

This was 2 weeks ago, so saying no-one else has reported it is not true.

[jslate1980]

We've reported the same. As soon as I was passed the details of the new system, looked at the source and saw Vimeo all over it, I told maths to not hold out too much hope.

 

I contacted maths watch and they sent me a vast list of individual clip urls, and done root urls to white list. When I went back to them and suggested whitelisting vimeo was not a great idea, they acknowledged, said they were looking on to it, and that the old site could be used for now.

 

The more people that get in touch with them, the better.

 

This was 2 weeks ago, so saying no-one else has reported it is not true.

 

Yep I did the same as you a couple of weeks ago. What a stupid idea hosting their content on Vimeo.

[MouseAT]

I just found this support thread exchange between MathsWatch and EduGeek. It's the most hilarious thing I've read all week:

 

https://vimeo.com/forums/help/topic:285477

 

"Aaargh, schools are complaining that they can't access our content? How do we make it work without them unblocking all of Vimeo, including the NSFW parts? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY CAN'T? AAAARGH!"

Edited November 8, 2016 by MouseAT

[tehstun]

Hopefully for the time being this will help, a updated list of 1800 standard https://vle.mathswatch.com/vle/ vimeo video links. https://bpaste.net/show/7d972b8ee5ae which you can then unblock or request a unblock.

[foofighterjim]

Anyone know a way of bulk importing these into Smoothwall? Just tried copy and paste and it just puts in the last entry.

 

Edit: Scratch that I have just discovered the edit in full text mode in Smoothwall.

Edited November 14, 2016 by foofighterjim

[itwasntme]

Have spent quite a few hours trying to approve mathswatch vimeo videos through our web filtering appliance, so far without success, even with considerable support from filtering provider. Mathswatch advised me that none of their other customers are experiencing any issues once they provided the whitelist. Suspected they weren't being honest about that, thanks for confirming.

[Gibbo]

An email from Mathswatch to me on the 20th Oct:

 

It might be worth contacting Smoothwall about it and see if they can help find a safe solution.

 

Just out of interest, not many schools have complained about this issue so far as most tend not to use the videos on site (students have no problem accessing the videos from home).

Additionally, it usually isn't a problem for teachers using the videos in their lessons as their computer often has administrative rights and hence allows our videos.

 

The current/old website at http://www.mathswatchvle.com will still be running until the end of November so your students can still use this on school site to access the videos. We hope to find a generic solution for all schools experiencing the same issue as yours before the final switch-over.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[CHiLL]

We encountered this issue also, as RM's SafetyNet had Vimeo blocked, though we've managed to implement a workaround.

 

We whitelisted vimeo.com within SafetyNet, meaning everyone could access Vimeo. Then we used Impero and blacklisted vimeo.com on the 'all students' group. That way the teaching staff can access it without any issues and students are still blocked from using it. We have done the same for Youtube too.

[chinesewhispers]

If it helps, they've told me they won't be discontinuing the old system until they've satisfactorily resolved the hosting of the videos on the new system. I guess they're looking for an alternative video hosting solution.

[MathsWatch]

Hi all,

The attachment should help LightSpeed users.

How To- Allow individual Vimeo videos - LightSpeed.pdf

[Kingstech]

Hi all,

The attachment should help LightSpeed users.

 

That will only work if Lightspeed is being used as the proxy. If you use your ISP as the proxy it will not work. Lightspeed needs to be your proxy.

[Opendium_Steve]

For what it's worth, we've recently been in touch with MathsWatch about these problems after some of our customers asked us to investigate: our filter (Iceni) allows Vimeo and YouTube videos embedded in educational sites to be whitelisted (so in theory you can tell it to whitelist the Vimeo videos embedded in mathswatch.com), but this is unfortunately not compatible with MathsWatch because of the slightly unique way that they embed their videos. We've asked Mathswatch if they will make some fairly trivial changes to allow this to work and they've passed on our suggestions to their IT team. So now we're waiting to see if they can implement those changes any time soon but in the mean time they suggest manually whitelisting each video as above (which is obviously quite onerous for administrators).

[Arthur]

Does anyone have any thought on this?

If you have a domain with G Suite or Office 365 could you not upload the videos from the Mathswatch DVDs there? Only users with a login will be able to watch the videos and you could also block Vimeo completely then.

[CHiLL]

If you have a domain with G Suite or Office 365 could you not upload the videos from the Mathswatch DVDs there? Only users with a login will be able to watch the videos and you could also block Vimeo completely then.

Unfortunately the disks that we have specifically state that we are not allowed to copy the video files from the disk.

[AceDaz]

I am writing a stinking email now as they expect me to white list over 1800 entries separately onto a website which hosts inappropriate and pornographic content.

[mike_ash]

Anyone successfully using mathswatch through a sophos utm? I'm not really wanting to allow kids full access to vimeo

[jslate1980]

A member of my SLT after complaining for weeks has received an email from Mathswatch offering alternative solution. As long as we provide the schools IP address.

[chinesewhispers]

Can anyone confirm a 'suitable' (by suitable I mean something that doesn't involve whitelisting each and every individual video URL) method is in place yet for schools using Smoothwall? I'm keen to learn more about a potential fix if we provide an IP address.

[3s-gtech]

A member of my SLT after complaining for weeks has received an email from Mathswatch offering alternative solution. As long as we provide the schools IP address.

 

That can be pretty ambiguous, depending on how you connect. Range? Does your ISP give you a static? What about LEAs/larger corporate networks?

[howartp]

A member of my SLT after complaining for weeks has received an email from Mathswatch offering alternative solution. As long as we provide the schools IP address.

 

Technically that would work for us cos we have a private outgoing IP - but they still need to find a solution that fits all schools.

[korifugi]

Anyone successfully using mathswatch through a sophos utm? I'm not really wanting to allow kids full access to vimeo

 

A member of my SLT after complaining for weeks has received an email from Mathswatch offering alternative solution. As long as we provide the schools IP address.

 

We use a Sophos UTM and have contacted mathswatch - they've been able to redirect our traffic for videos to their hosted files. They'll need your IP address, but then they'll be able to redirect all their incoming (as they see it) traffic so that it all works.

 

Not sure why they don't offer this out as a fix publicly.

[chipman]

I've also contacted mathswatch with our IP address & they redirected it to their hosted videos. I guess they use Vimeo to save on bandwidth going to their servers but why they think Vimeo is a good choice for an educational maths site to be used in schools is a mystery to me.... it just doesn't add up!

[korifugi]

I've also contacted mathswatch with our IP address & they redirected it to their hosted videos. I guess they use Vimeo to save on bandwidth going to their servers but why they think Vimeo is a good choice for an educational maths site to be used in schools is a mystery to me.... it just doesn't add up!

 

Exactly - with the content available on Vimeo, they might as well go whole hog and host them on P*rnh*b.

[hardtailstar]

Exactly - with the content available on Vimeo, they might as well go whole hog and host them on P*rnh*b.

 

I think its run by three teachers, Which explains why they think Vimeo is a great idea.

 

We are having issues with them too.