Checking internet filter logs...

[_Bat_]

Using the [terrible] BGfL SINA, i'm going through all our internet logs in response to something a teacher told me today about a certain pupil. We are a primary school so it's unlikely we have anything terrible, but i've noticed rather a lot of youtube pages being banned. This is the site said teacher wanted to talk to me about with regards to this pupil. She said she didn't want to ruin youtube for the majority of pupils because it is a good resource, but this boy is accessing dodgy stuff and could I check what he has been accessing.

 

Anyway, the blocked pages are all ones where the user has to verify their age, such as:

 

http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%253Fv%253DoyBcCUI02tw

 

http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%253Fsearch%253D%2526mode%253Drelated%2526v%253DZU8X2TaMWqc

 

http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%253Fv%253Dx_uNCa3Y_E4

 

But obviously can't even access them myself due to filter. Tried to be naughty and find a proxy but had no success because our LEA is so darn good.

 

How do other people overcome this issue? Its fine when a site is -obviously- bad, you don't need to check it. But youtube asks you to verify your age if a video has been flagged as bad by other users, which of course has margin for error. Not asking you to give me proxies here, so don't worry, haha. Chances are they wouldn't work anyway (none of the ones I have seen on this site before have).

 

Blocking youtube totally would put me on bad terms with teachers and pupils, but ideally I need to see what exactly is on there that pupils have found that they shouldn't.

[Geoff]

Here in Lancs we have the option of being taken off the main LEAs filters and doing it in house. Once this is done it's trivial to assign machines and/or users as 'unfiltered' for checking such things.

[webman]

Personally, I have a squid box at home on a non-standard port which will accept and forward requests only from the school's IP.

[mrforgetful]

Youtube is banned here by the LEA, though I could unban it I wished I don't feel it has much to offer as a resource for learning.

[bossman]

Everything these days seems to be a "good resource" according to teachers as long as they don't have to provide the resources themselves they will say anything but their prayers.

I personally advocate the banning of it and so too does our LEA, i am all for freedom of access to a degree but when this involves degrading or unsavoury eliments then we as responsible adults should set a good example don't you think?

I am very surprised at a Primary school advocating the use of this site and for the teaching staff to go along with it (wish my job was so easy) here you are kids go on this site and browse for good resources oops! mind the........too late err Mr Technician i want this bit of the site banned because of this and i want it done now, (Technician) Why don't we just ban the site (Teacher ) because it is full of good resources which i don't have to produce myself and it makes my well paid job so much easier.

[_Bat_]

Wish our LEA was as kind Geoff, haha. Ours are control freaks. Ever heard the saying "if you give up control, you gain control?".

 

I might quietly set something like that up webman if I get the chance. I have a linux server at home anyway so shouldn't be too difficult.

 

@mrforgetful

 

I agree, but sometimes the teachers encourage the kids to mess around for half an hour (especially before school) and youtube is a site they regulate often. If it gets excessive, I will just block it, but as for now i'll leave it be.

[_Bat_]

Everything these days seems to be a "good resource" according to teachers as long as they don't have to provide the resources themselves they will say anything but their prayers.

I personally advocate the banning of it and so too does our LEA, i am all for freedom of access to a degree but when this involves degrading or unsavoury eliments then we as responsible adults should set a good example don't you think?

I am very surprised at a Primary school advocating the use of this site and for the teaching staff to go along with it (wish my job was so easy) here you are kids go on this site and browse for good resources oops! mind the........too late err Mr Technician i want this bit of the site banned because of this and i want it done now, (Technician) Why don't we just ban the site (Teacher ) because it is full of good resources which i don't have to produce myself and it makes my well paid job so much easier.

 

Lol, I can see what you are saying, if it was down to me i'd just ban it regardless, saves me an hour or two trying to find out what is being accessed on that site, haha.

 

I can't really do it though, not unless I find evidence that more then just this one pupil is accessing dodgy stuff. My IT coordinator asked me directly not to ban it, so if possible i'll try and avoid it. I can see what you are saying though.

[tom_newton]

Annoyingly, once you're logged in, it only verifies your age *once* so blocking the age verification URl won't help, and there's no obvious marker on the video display page to flag it as inappropriate - so filtering only what youtube describe as inappropriate is hard - unless you guys have ideas?

[Ravening_Wolf]

@tom_newton

Send teachers back to college to catch up on the "Teaching from those expensive text books all schools have but ignore in favour of the ease of Google" lecture they all seem to have bunked the first time round?

[TechMonkey]

Just to add to the BAN THEM!!!!!! cry. Blocked youTube and google video when they first got discovered by the masses and started filling with rubbish. Great shame as there really are some good videos on there and the number of web sites that use them to show things now is huge (plus all the great things people send ). But there is a heck of a lot of rubbish and dross and it does just become a time waster.

[fooby]

Banned here also, youtube and google videos.

 

Mainly dross on it, some one needs to add a education video sharing site - without the endless cats jumping from bushes on to kids videos.

 

fooby

 

... that said do a video search for japan prank- hilarious!

[indiegirl]

... b*gger, someone's already registered 'edutube.com'... grrrr

[fooby]

e러닝이 한·미 FTA 교육개방의 숨겨진 무기?

 

.... well? what do you think?

 

why someone (i assume japaneese?) wants that address ill probably never know

 

fooby..... goes looking to google translate

[Norphy]

Shame but chances are if you set up a service similar to Youtube and put tube into the name, you'd have Google's crack team of ninja lawyers onto you before you could say Jack Robinson

[fooby]

ebutude? or is that sort of thing really naughty.

 

fooby

[tom_newton]

As it goes, I had a word with our dev team and we'll be able to selectively block bits by the adult flag in the version 6 codebase. How useful this will be remains entirely to be seen, but as it's a side-effect of another feature it is no bother

 

@Ravening_wolf: I quite agree - my dad's just retired after a long stint in front of the blackboard (Geography) and he's never even used his school lappy (despite having two very IT literate sons!) - a great advocate of more practical learning!