YouTube Blocked at School

[Choi9111]

Well my frustration is that unfortunately ALLLL the computers at our school blocks youtube (thanks to some dumb students) so i started this thread to see if any of you teams that have movies files of your robots could maybe send me a link (that is not youtube) so we can see what all you other teams have accomplished! Thanks for anything you guys can do!

[lancerbotics]

I'm glad to see that we are not the only ones with this problem

[raymaniac]

Yeah, it happened to us too.

[Otsumami]

you may be able to use google to upload the videos and view them. you would have to check to see if google video can be accessed from your school.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by raymaniac

Yeah, it happened to us too.

Actually it didn't. You can still get to Youtube, Google Video, etc. just fine. But they un-installed flash video on all of them (and students don't have install rights), so it's even worse for us.
But you can always watch at home!

[raymaniac]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

But you can always watch at home!

Actually, parental controls are blocking it.

[dtape]

Our school also blocks youtube

[Jak DiGriz]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

But you can always watch at home!

Thanks for the insight. The sky is also blue.

[ZeetherKID77]

I hate when schools block websites like that. Especially when it doesn't make sense why they blocked it.

[Cuog]

Yeah having Sites blocked is no fun. My school has been upgrading everything which has been good and bad, websense has been freaking out, It even blocked the schools website for a day. On the bright side I stay on the ITs good side and I'm often able to get some of the old hardware that they don't need anymore. If you want something unblocked the best thing that you can do is go to the Administrator with a good argument as to why it should be unblocked, and there is a good chance that they will unblock it for you. And definately don't do like a member of our team did, story: Our team has an account on the system so that we can log in and get slightly better privileges, mostly more network storage and unlimited printing(instead of the 400 page a year limit). So this unnamed member of the team went to proxify to get around the websense, well the admins have a nifty script that immediately suspends whatever account access proxify and emails them to let them know what computer they are on. So we had to do a lot of smoothing things over to get our team back on their good side. Please, be smart and don't make the system admins job harder.

[Alexa Stott]

Originally Posted by Charger_07

ya its annoying that they block youtube at my school but people at my school do some stupid stuff....in my opinion youtube is the best video hosting site, thats why it annoys me that websense blocks it... but do not tell me ways to get past the filter.....(thats for the CD admins and the ones giving me negative feedback) i dont want anyone thinking i am enabling people to break the rules, so once again don't tell me ways to get past the filters....i dont want anymore negative feedback for something that i didnt even do and i dont want to have to send a message requesting the feedback be removed only to not be listened to at all by a CD admin

If you have a problem with negative rep you received, take it up with the person involved and, if you truly believe they were wrong, contact Brandon and he could possibly remove it (or change it to neutral).

Also, remember that all the mods here on ChiefDelphi are volunteers. Many of them are in college or have a job, as well as on FIRST teams who are smack in the middle of build season. Please remember this before you criticize them.

Thank you.

[Tri_Lam]

Originally Posted by M. Krass.

Seriously... talking about methods for circumventing school policy is not okay. Really.

uhhhhhhhh sry bout that guys will keep quiet now

[Matt Gardner]

We don;t really have a problem with that at our school because we have a wireless network that allows us to use our own laptops, psps, etc. and we can access any site we wish (people often play WOW in the halls at lunch, lol). Also, our technical head is our mentor, so if we have issues that need fixing they can be addressed...

[65_Xero_Huskie]

Originally Posted by Matt Gardner

We don;t really have a problem with that at our school because we have a wireless network that allows us to use our own laptops, psps, etc. and we can access any site we wish (people often play WOW in the halls at lunch, lol). Also, our technical head is our mentor, so if we have issues that need fixing they can be addressed...

O.O

I want your school...

[Tuba4]

I can address the school web blocking issue from a very different viewpoint from most of those who have posted. I am on the school board for the Millcreek Township School District in Erie PA. Our township borders the city of Erie PA on the south and the west. We have approximately 1,500 laptop and desktop computers to serve 7,500 students in 2 high schools, 3 middle schools and 7 elementary schools. I also chair the Operations Committee which oversees the installation of technology. So although I am not an IT expert, I do know a little bit about the problem.

There are 2 main reasons for schools to block so many sites. First and foremost, installing web filtering software was mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Some of you may have heard of that. No choice, we had to do it. Many schools took the easy way out and blocked large categories of websites (Someone help me out here. Is their not some type of HTML tag which can help identify site content and rating?) such as sports, games, entertainment, and the all encompassing unidentified and unrated categories.

The second and perhaps more important reason is the issue of bandwidth and it's cost. Students were consuming such large amounts of bandwidth viewing and downloading videos, playing and downloading music and playing online video games that it had a huge impact on legitimate student and administrative usage. We were forced to adopt the category blocking I mentioned to bring the situation under control. We also updated our policies regarding computer usage and put some teeth into them. Here is a broad overview of our policies: http://www.mtsd.org/district/technology/policy.asp Sadly a former robotics team member got caught and was suspended from school. And no I did not turn him in!

So there are some very legitimate reasons for school web blocking. But we also have a process and procedure to have sites unblocked. I would bet you all have a process by which you can get sites unblocked too. Just calmly document your reasons to get a site unblocked without going on a rant about how unfair blocking is. You will get a lot further that way.