Use YouTube safely in your digital classroom
The educational benefits of YouTube are undeniable.
Educational content uploaded to YouTube is of very high quality and in the past one would have happily paid for such high-quality content.
However, YouTube is the best place for an unsupervised student and can prove to be an endless source of distraction if it is not managed and filtered properly.
How do educators ensure that students are benefiting from YouTube?
Making the most of YouTube in your Digital Classroom
Educators face the dilemma of having found high quality educational content on YouTube and may not be sure whether to share it with their students due to losing students to the endless distractions that exist on YouTube.
This creates stress and reluctance to utilise the incredible amount of educational content on YouTube. Thankfully modern device management applications offer YouTube filters for K-12 classrooms. Educators may have peace of mind when allowing students to use YouTube in class, knowing that students won’t be distracted by the endless amount of content on YouTube.
How to use YouTube Safely
All content on YouTube is categorised by creators and YouTube has some incredibly advanced functionality on hand to assess the categorisation and content of videos.
This allows modern device management applications to effectively block entire categories of content on YouTube with their built in web filtering and YouTube filtering features.
Educators can select exactly what content needs to be blocked and what should be allowed, either in class or in-line with the device usage policy of their device program.
This can even be done during a lesson which means educators don’t have to ruin the flow of the lesson and call on IT support just because they want students to access a video which would normally be blocked, or to request assistance in ensuring that only the specific video is accessible.
A modern YouTube filter also allows educators to block specific videos or channels should they be deemed inappropriate for the task at hand. For example, if a viral video is circulating around the school an educator can go into the device management application and block said video directly.
Educators can also block or allow specific channels and can even go as far as allow a channel and then block an inappropriate video on said channel while still allowing students to access the rest of the content on that channel. Which is truly incredible.
Such comprehensive YouTube filtering allows educators and parents to have peace of mind that students aren’t getting distracted by YouTube or accessing inappropriate content online
Drive Safe Learning in Your Digital Classroom with YouTube filtering
As a Google Partner, Mobile Guardian’s YouTube filter offers some of the more advanced filtering features out of the device management applications available for K-12 institutions.
Mobile Guardian’s YouTube filtering supports student learning through the creation of safe and healthy digital classroom environments, with incredible functionality and flexibility for educators to create their ideal online learning environments.
If you are interested in learning how you can benefit from Mobile Guardian’s YouTube filtering functionality to create safe learning in your digital classroom, you can find out more about our Safer solution here.
For more information regarding the benefits of YouTube, we’ve covered the benefits to be found on YouTube on our blog in posts such as the Top 5 Educational channels on YouTube.
To explore more best-in-class features for modern K-12 classrooms, our blog on features that drive learning in the digital classroom shows you have to get the best out of your digital classrooms and by extension, your hardware and software investments.
Onwards
Michael Rosenthal
Team Mobile Guardian
