Banning of Youtube

Our school's system admin is looking to ban the use of Youtube due to bandwidth issues.

Anyone else had similar issues ?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jenny McClintock on April 24, 2011 at 5:59am

My school system was never allowed to use YouTube, so I became very savvy at home... downloading the clips through Zamzar and saving them on my portable hard drive. This is also a much more professional way to use the videos... you don't have all of the advertisements or distractions included with YouTube.

TeacherTube is great alternative to YouTube and this article by @rmbyrne outlines some of the best.

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Permalink Reply by Pamela Jean Oberembt on April 27, 2011 at 5:22pm

I, too, have the same district issue and put You Tube clips through Zamzar. Mine attach to my email at school, so I can open them and show them that way or put them on my portable hard drive or a flash drive.

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Permalink Reply by Doug McCarthy on April 29, 2011 at 3:02am

Jenny regarding downloadin Youtube:

As a sys admin and teacher at a school I also need to ensure all Internet users comply with school and general legal practice hence why Youtube terms and conditions are of relevance:

Snapshot of Youtube's terms and conditions of use state :

3. you agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Website itself, the YouTube Player, or such other means as YouTube may explicitly designate for this purpose; "

and

13. You shall not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, or otherwise exploit any Content for any other purposes without the prior written consent of YouTube or the respective licensors of the Content. "

Therefore using external software to copy and download (unapproved by Youtube) and copying to thumb drives opens the school upto a breach of Youtubes terms and conditons.

Hence why our school uses KwawF as it uses an approved Youtube connector with school approved playlists to view Youtube’s videos without all the nonsense that goes with Youtube such as ads etc

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Yearout on April 24, 2011 at 6:43pm

Keeping students off of Youtube due to bandwidth issues - understandable.

Keeping teachers off of Youtube due to bandwidth issues - unless your district bandwidth is really bad, and/or unless you have teachers using Youtube WAY too much or frivolously, it shouldn't be a problem.

My district will open up Youtube for short periods with a special request due to the bandwidth argument. I wish they would just quietly open it for teachers and find out if it really does become a problem. It should be a pretty simple experiment to run, and one could quickly filter it again if need be. You might ask if your system can do "packet shaping", sometimes known as throttling, where a Youtube request is essentially last priority in the system, meaning virtually everything else gets first dibs on bandwidth.

Zamzar is very handy, you are correct. Another one is keepvid.com provided it isn't blocked in your district.

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Permalink Reply by TryingHard on April 26, 2011 at 2:16am

I just heard it wont be as bad as I thought as our school will use something called KwawF. Actually sounds exciting as I believe the students can watch Youtube through it without as you said Jenny, "advertisements or distractions".

Our sys admin says we can create our own playlists and he can set up some stuff to control and monitor student searches and access.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Yearout on April 27, 2011 at 10:22am

Quietube is another site that can knock out all the ads, comments and distractions in a Youtube video.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Brumley on April 27, 2011 at 11:33am

Numerous solutions exist to throttle bandwidth for a particular user group and/or site. For example, you can limit the bandwidth for student users on YouTube and not effect everyone else. Every student in the school could be on YouTube and they would only be using a small part of the pipe. I think this is a way better solution than an outright ban.

Thanks,

Mark