Are there any primaries on here who have Youtube unblocked?

[TechSupp]

As per the title, getting more and more requests to have Youtube videos for lessons now that they are trying to teach a themed section of work. I can understand their requests (needed some myself for the kids, but fortunately techy enough to download the ones I wanted and convert them). I know from reading on here some secondaries have it unblocked but just wondering about primaries? I can have it unblocked but only on a school basis not on a per group of users basis.

[localzuk]

We're a middle school here, so have 2 years of primary aged kids.

 

We had it blocked for quite a long time, due to fears of inappropriate stuff being viewed, and time wasting, but it got to the stage of me being asked for it to be unblocked for the first lesson, blocked for the second, unblocked for the third etc... In the end, it was decided that the useful aspects of the site outweighed the potential negatives.

 

We've had a couple of kids stumble onto dodgy stuff on there in the last couple of years, much like on the rest of the internet, and they were dealt with by reporting the videos on youtube, and them ending up with either being removed or age-restriction being added - with us blocking the individual video in the short-term.

[elsiegee40]

I point them at

TeacherTube - Teach the World | Teacher Videos | Lesson Plan Videos | Student Video Lessons | Online Teacher Made Videos

which isn't blocked. If it isn't on there, they can't have it.

[witch]

We're a middle school here, so have 2 years of primary aged kids.

 

We had it blocked for quite a long time, due to fears of inappropriate stuff being viewed, and time wasting, but it got to the stage of me being asked for it to be unblocked for the first lesson, blocked for the second, unblocked for the third etc... In the end, it was decided that the useful aspects of the site outweighed the potential negatives.

 

We've had a couple of kids stumble onto dodgy stuff on there in the last couple of years, much like on the rest of the internet, and they were dealt with by reporting the videos on youtube, and them ending up with either being removed or age-restriction being added - with us blocking the individual video in the short-term.

 

That's really interesting as we are the same sort of middle school and have no intention of ever unblocking YouTube as the kids could access (and often talk about) very dodgy stuff. I am amazed that you havent had more issues - do you make sure that the children are NEVER on a computer unsupervised? That would be my main problem as one of my IT suites ( the one used for ICTAC) is open to the children at lunchtime and there is only one lunchtime supervisor wandering around

[localzuk]

That's really interesting as we are the same sort of middle school and have no intention of ever unblocking YouTube as the kids could access (and often talk about) very dodgy stuff. I am amazed that you havent had more issues - do you make sure that the children are NEVER on a computer unsupervised? That would be my main problem as one of my IT suites ( the one used for ICTAC) is open to the children at lunchtime and there is only one lunchtime supervisor wandering around

 

Yup, I've had teacher's complain to my boss about me being so obsessive about unsupervised access. Only times I've come across unsupervised kids, I've kicked them out and had words with the teacher in question.

 

To be fair, we don't have many issues at all with kids on the net in school - I randomly monitor classes via ABTutor, and if I see anything out of the ordinary, I go and pull them from the lesson and give them a dressing down. Most don't even try now. The worst we have is kids playing games.

[Eappariello]

There are solutions out there that allow youtube access in a safe way from a couple of filtering companies and also a couple of free ones that allow video's on an individual basis.

The basic concept is: Teacher's have access to youtube and finds a video they want to use. They submit this to a modertor within school who can aprrove them. Once approved its available on an internal public searchable portal for the students and is then streamed from youtube to the students without them ever visiting youtube itself.

 

Hope this helps - youtube can be a great teaching and educational resource. You just need to strip out all the dodgy bits.

 

Simon

[laserblazer]

Our teachers are adamant that they MUST have youtube to be able to deliver their lessons and SLT has supported it. The kids seem to think it acceptable to log on and watch/listen to youtube instead of working and some teachers just let them get on with it. At the last staff meeting, both the Head of ICT and I pressed for it to be blocked but we were overruled.

[elsiegee40]

What do you use for your web-filtering? Presumably it can't be tuned to allow a different set of rules for staff and pupils?

[LeMarchand]

Our LEA has a webfilter that blocks it at one of my four schools, but not the others . It's possible to make a case for unblocking of sites, but none of the teachers seem to be concerned enough to do so.

 

Having seen one senior member of staff using it in a lesson (the "I have a dream" speech) when it was unblocked, but failing to notice the ALL CAPS!!! racist remarks and bad language in the comments, I'm not going to encourage them to get it unblocked.

[laserblazer]

What do you use for your web-filtering? Presumably it can't be tuned to allow a different set of rules for staff and pupils?

 

Not the way the system is set up. I can block here, as can the LEA but we can't differentiate between staff and pupils.

[glennda]

Youtube is blocked here for students on school machines but staff have access to youtube aswell as sixthformers on there personal laptops (although nobody has told them!). But i am working on sixthformers being blocked while staff have access