I would like to put a sign above every door in a school district to help everyone remember why they are there. Occasionally I have been surprised at some of the policies by a few administrators or IT people. Some policies and practices are necessary, but we need to always remember that we are not here for the convenience of adults but to ensure high quality learning is happening in the classroom. To do that teachers need to be trusted as professionals to create an environment that is conducive to learning and to have the tools they want in order to make that environment a reality. It would be hard to argue that YouTube does not have resources that are helpful to the classroom. http://youtube.com/edu shows an enormous amount of videos that are educational. YouTube is also the easiest platform for teachers to upload their own instructional videos and tutorials.
Click Here for an article on “Dispelling Myths About Blocked Websites in Schools.”
2 thoughts on “CIPA does NOT require YouTube to be blocked”
The main reasons a school Distict would block YouTube would be because of bandwidth issues and mainly because of the comments section. I’ve seen several educational videos where the first few comments have inappropriate language.
The comments can be turned off. We should not be shutting down a valuable educational resource because of bandwidth, start fundraising to get the bandwidth up so students do not lose out.