How to keep websites unblocked

YouTube is perhaps best known for its cavalcade of homemade performances and TV clips, but many people are turning to it for free tutoring in math, science and other complicated subjects. Math videos won't rival the millions of hits garnered by laughing babies, but a YouTube tutorial on calculus integrals has been watched almost 50,000 times in the last year. Others on angular velocity and harmonic motion have more than 10,000 views each. The videos are appealing for several reasons, said Kim Gregson, an Ithaca College professor of new media. Students come to the videos when they're ready to study and fully awake, which is not always the case in 8 a.m. calculus classes. And they can watch the videos as many times as they need until they understand. Benton. Original article in LA Times.

Our district does not block YouTube. We give it a very low priority setting in our packetshaper and we have had regular requests to have it blocked. But YouTube remains accessible to our staff and students.

But to keep it this way, we keep as many people as possible informed about its postive uses. See graph:

So far, so good...

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Update (Dec 19): Joyce Valenza at NeverEnding Search has a great blog post called When YouTube is blocked (seven ways ways around). If you don't have any ethic issues with violating YouTube's Terms of Use (and I don't), these are some easy ways to save YouTube videos to your desktop.

Comments

[Jen Hegna]

Hi Doug,
I have started using Youtube for that just in time training moment. For instance, I needed to learn how to use a particular formula in excel. I went to youtube, did a search, and in minutes it came up with a video step by step how to. I can also do this for video editing, photo editing, ect. Right now we block from 8-3pm in our school. We most likely will be looking at a packet shaping program in the near future. Youtube is becoming more valuable to our users than a nuisance....

[Anna Watkins]

My 11-year-old son uses YouTube videos for drawing lessons, from Batman to still life. He figured this out for himself! Our school's technology department unblocked YouTube a year or so ago, but I hadn't thought to actively promote the tutorial aspect. Thanks for the idea.

[Charlie A. Roy]

@ Doug
Great post. I've used youtube to learn how to cook "blue crabs" while on vacation, how to learn a different way of solving math problems, and most recently how to make Raclette. But obviously students would only use Youtube at schools to look at inappropriate videos of no educational value. Or they might do something like this to promote a charity event:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZdmqeVulC0

I'm betting on the latter.

[Elona Hartjes]

My school blocks You Tube because they say it takes too much band width and slows down the system.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Jen,

And given our coming budget cuts, it may turn out that YouTue will become more valuable as we start cutting some commercial products like AtomicLearning!

Thanks for the comment,

Doug

Thanks, Charlie. Why is it so many adults always jump to the conclusion kids will always do the worst things with tech rather than the best? Are we projecting???

Doug

Hi Elona,

This is why we installed a packetshaper on our network. We can give YouTube unblocked, but give it a low priority. Suggest it to your tech staff.

All the best,

Doug