YouTube strategy?

[Uplift]

Youtube is an amazing resource so it's a shame to have it blocked. We have trailed allowing it for whole school and generally it works well, but with certain children all it takes is 1 inappropriate video to open up a world of clips they shouldn't be watching, in particular children with behaviour issues who get excited over violence, accidents, blood, and all the rest of it, which is easily accessible on youtube.

 

Is there a way we can filter content, a child/school friendly version? how effective is it?

 

Do you enable youtube or is it blocked completely?

[AngryTechnician]

At present we block access to YouTube for pupils and allow it only for teachers, but we are a primary setting so have to be more cautious. In my last school (a secondary) we allowed it and managed it with teacher supervision - which I know can be a problem in some schools.

 

We have recently deployed a Smoothwall filter, and this now allows the built-in Safety Mode of Youtube to be forced always-on (which is quite effective), and can strip out the comments sections. We are currently evaluating this internally to see if, combined with supervision, these measures will allow us to lift our blanket ban.

[JonWPS]

We allow it for teachers, and our C&M Diploma students, but block it for everyone else. Safety mode is also enforced.

[carvjo]

bloxx make a media filter for youtube.

 

I have no idea on cost or how it works in practice - but if it works as well as the web filter then it will be pretty good..

[Uplift]

How do you automatically enforce Safety Mode for all computers?

[Iain]

We have just allowed access for pupils, and so far it seems to be ok with the combination of staff supervision and enforcing Safety Mode through our ISA/TMG proxy.

[sonofsanta]

Using Smoothwall here, we have it open for teachers (with comments disabled) and have a custom list set up so that individual videos can be allowed on request. Works well for us.

 

Opening it up to all users was a disaster in the past, even in our setting - selective all girls grammar (11-18). Not just in terms of timewasting, either, but in terms of "students showing the Human Centipede trailer to each other and giving other girls nightmares and leading to parents complaining". And yes, teachers should supervise better etc. etc. but this isn't a perfect world and we do what we can.

[jdoyle]

is opening up Youtube to students/staff a strategy?

[Davit2005]

bloxx make a media filter for youtube.

 

I have no idea on cost or how it works in practice - but if it works as well as the web filter then it will be pretty good..

 

We were looking at this at last school. Basically videos are submitted for suitability to a member of staff. If the material is suitable it is then made available. I beleive it is poss to make available to age groups by security groups if need.

[Guest salan]

I would love to know how with SW (we have SG) you can enforce safety mode and block comments. Anyone?

Alan

[AngryTechnician]

I think it may be a Smoothwall Guardian 3 feature. Have you been upgraded yet?

[Guest salan]

I think it may be a Smoothwall Guardian 3 feature. Have you been upgraded yet?

Unfortunately not

Alan

[edutech4schools]

All my primary schools block youtube. We had a teacher type in roman jugs and it came back with the other type of jugs on the smatboard. Later a pupil told his mum, she called the police and the teacher was removed from school and his computers were taken off site and examined.

 

My advice is be very very careful.

 

I get the staff to download the clips they need from home.

[glennda]

We had a teacher type in roman jugs and it came back with the other type of jugs on the smatboard..

 

not being funny but they should not be so quite careless - if somebody has common sense they wouldn't do that

[Torrevez]

All my primary schools block youtube. We had a teacher type in roman jugs and it came back with the other type of jugs on the smatboard. Later a pupil told his mum, she called the police and the teacher was removed from school and his computers were taken off site and examined.

 

My advice is be very very careful.

 

I get the staff to download the clips they need from home.

 

Bit over the top if you ask me. Why the teacher wasn't checking the links prior to showing them to students is beyond me.

[linkazoid]

 

We have recently deployed a Smoothwall filter, and this now allows the built-in Safety Mode of Youtube to be forced always-on (which is quite effective), and can strip out the comments sections.

 

Does the comment removal work for you. I was speaking to support (Last week) and they said that it's not working as Google have changed bits that stop it. I am using G3..

 

Michael

[sonofsanta]

Unfortunately not

Alan

 

I seem to recall the comment removal being in Guardian prior to G3 - although it was tagged as Beta it seemed to work. It's under Content Modification - Comments in G3 but I think it was somewhere different before - have a click around though, I'm sure it was there.

 

And if you want to upgrade to G3, you just need to ask @tom_newton (or any of the other SW folk round here) to put you on the list - afaik they still do it on a request basis due to the scope of the upgrade, but it is well worthwhile.

[rad]

Youtube is available for Staff should they wish to have access to it (change of proxy in policy setting) and it has recently been made available for certain Media students in Sixth Form. The students have signed a user policy to agree to the terms. All Sixth form students are only able to log onto one computer, so mates cant be logged on who dont have the access.

[Sylv3r]

We allow youtube to our staff and sixth form students via our Smoothwall box too.

[tom_newton]

youtube have recently changed some stuff - i don't think this has broken comment removal though. Should be in G2 and G3, though its about 10000 times less CPU intensive in G3

 

We have some new youtube functionality being added I hope to debut at BETT... of course it will be rolled out to all users with up-to-date licences as per usual - do remember, your licence renewals cover ALL updates including biggies like G3, so when you have a bit of time to upgrade, just ask to be sent the s/w if you haven't already done so.

[jdoyle]

as ever, a thread about Youtube strategy(?) follows the predictable path of do you enable/disable access for staff/students and how you might do this for particular filtering tools.

 

Does any school that enables access to video resources such as YouTube actually obtain better results than those that don't? Are students more engaged? Do teachers plan their lessons better? Is access to these resources part of a wider strategy re e-learning or is access to YouTube enough to solve all educational content issues?