Opening access to YouTube right move for Chicago Public Schools

The Chicago Tribune recently reported that the Chicago Public Schools system has changed its position on the website YouTube, write Brad Boeker for Yahoo! News. Teachers, previously blocked from using YouTube, now have access to the ubiquitous video site. This is the right move for the district. Technology offers unlimited ways to engage and challenge students, and districts would be foolish to take away such valuable tools for its teaching staffs. There are valid concerns about using YouTube in schools. The district where I teach briefly shut down student access to the site last year when our technology director did a study and discovered that student use of YouTube was hogging an inordinate amount of the school’s available bandwidth, causing other online applications to bog down. Similarly, many videos (or more specially the ads accompanying those videos) aren’t appropriate for use in schools…

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YouTube grants schools special access to 400,000 educational videos

YouTube has an enormous collection of educational clips that could be used by teachers, but many schools choose to block the site so that kids won’t be able to access unsavory videos, Yahoo! News reports. Even if the site can be accessed, teachers still don’t use YouTube inside the classroom, as they’re worried about students getting distracted by music videos or cute clips of cats and fish slamming clams. To circumvent the issue, the site recently launched a YouTube for Schools program separate from the rest of the site. This means school administrators can allow access to it on their wireless networks, while keeping the rest of the site blocked. The program puts approximately 400,000 YouTube Education videos (including ones from trusted institutions like the Smithsonian) in the hands of teachers, who can use them to capture the interest of even those with incredibly short attention spans…

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