District Filters
"streaming video and audio are blocked on the network. It is a district-wide filter - it is apparently a safeguard because of the bandwidth it takes up."
This is constantly being told to me...I can't listen to various podcasts, etc. and the principals are wanting to have their teachers and students start working with video and audio podcasting this upcoming year. How are other people getting around the issue of filters...or maybe my question is, what should I be telling the Technology Director that will maybe convince her to change some of the safeguards.
HELP!!!!!!
This is constantly being told to me...I can't listen to various podcasts, etc. and the principals are wanting to have their teachers and students start working with video and audio podcasting this upcoming year. How are other people getting around the issue of filters...or maybe my question is, what should I be telling the Technology Director that will maybe convince her to change some of the safeguards.
HELP!!!!!!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Steve O'Connor on
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Video, in particular, takes tremendous bandwidth. The problem is not the filter, rather the bandwidth. If you do not have adequate bandwidth to accommodate the audio and video, then the use of such will bog down the whole network potentially rendering it so slow as to make it useless.
It sounds like the powers that be need to invest in more bandwidth before asking teachers and students to make podcasts. Circumventing the filter would not be productive.
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Permalink Reply by Peggy Matthews on
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It will mainly be audio podcasts that the students will be doing, also the teachers. What is the cost of bandwidth? Is it something that is reasonable or fairly pricey? (not sure on that spelling!!)
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Audio is much better than video, perhaps you could make the case for it--again providing they have the bandwidth.
There are two elements to bandwidth--what the hardware and wiring (or optical fiber) can accommodate--both coming into your school and within the school, and the bandwidth purchased.
First, your bandwidth provider may or may not be able to deliver more. Second, if they can deliver more and you don't have the infrastructure to distribute it, then it must be upgraded (adding expense). If the provider can deliver more and your infrastructure can accommodate it, then it is less expensive to purchase it.
Make friends with your tech director and have a conversation.
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Will do.
Thanks
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Permalink Reply by Paul Anderson on
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If you want to create audio and video podcasts, this is probably doable, in most networks, as long as you store the files (pocasts) on your own internal server. Depending on the podcasts you wanted to download, you might be able to set something up, to download the files after hours (tech director would have to set up). Basically, using todays trends, whatever you have today, you will need to triple in 2 to 3 years. If you don't have enough now, you will probably need at least 5 times the bandwidth that you have now (considering you aren't doing any video now).
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Thank you. I appreciate all the advice everyone is sharing with me.
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Permalink Reply by Alice Mercer on
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Hmm, well they should take some of that eRate savings they are getting for having the filtering software, and use it to buy some better bandwidth. My district did, and now we can stream. It ain't perfect. Now that we can stream, folks are using it a lot and things have stayed slow, but at least we have video/audio.
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