In late October, CUSD’s Information Technology Department finally unblocked YouTube from classrooms.

Teachers now have access the widely popular video sharing website without using a work-around. While this may seem like a dream come true to most students, there is a catch. Students do not yet have access to the video sharing website.

Additionally, not all content is unblocked. Teachers and students are still required to abide by the “Acceptable Use Policy” which includes the use of safeshare.tv to prevent inappropriate advertisements/recommendations (the splash page) from appearing on the screen.

CUSD plans to use a “tiered filtering” scheme to weed out inappropriate sites from students. In other words there will be different levels of access depending on age.

“The filtering level will be based upon the level of education. This includes everything from Administration to kindergarten students,” said Bill Kaiser one of two teachers at SJHHS who will serve as DLT’s (Digital Literacy Teachers) this year.

The unblocking of YouTube goes hand-in-hand with the roll out of Chromebook carts to classrooms.  Both Google Docs and YouTube will soon soon become central features of the digital classroom. Students and teachers will need access to these sites to fully utilize the capability of the Chromebooks in the classroom.

While some students hope to use it for help on their schoolwork, others will inevitably try to use it for entertainment in their free time.

“I’ll probably just use it for messing around, to be honest,” said Sam Hunter (11). That is, of course, if he can get past the filter to those sites he wants to mess around on.

New access to YouTube is a huge step forward for the district in accommodating the digital world, and will change the way teachers teach and students learn.