topic Re: Youtube Edu in Automation/API Discussions

Youtube Edu

jott — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 19:34:41 GMT

We want to allow youtube edu videos for everyone on our network, but still block youtube for students. Youtube has a set up walkthrough that helps, but I need some assistance thinking this through. So any assistance would be helpful. I have posted the directions below...

Prerequisites

In order to access YouTube for Schools you will likely need help from your school's network administrator so please share this information with him or her. This sign up process should only take minutes! Before you begin, make sure your school meets the following requirements:

Instructions

Make sure YouTube is actually inaccessible from your school. If students can visit YouTube.com, you can access the educational content simply by visiting YouTube.com/education and there is no need to sign up for YouTube for Schools.
If YouTube is blocked at your school, it must be blocked at the domain level for YouTube for Schools to work. YouTube for Schools will not work if YouTube is blocked at the IP level.
Your hardware filter or proxy server must support either HTTP header modification or URL parameter modification.

Follow the three steps below and your school will have access to thousands of free educational videos in minutes. Once you are finished with the set-up be sure to read our our additional resources listed at the end of this page.

Step 1

Choose one of the following two options, depending on which works for your school's network:

Option A: Add new HTTP header rule

: Please modify your hardware filter or proxy server settings so that all outgoing traffic to youtube.com contains the following custom HTTP header. The ID to use in the HTTP header configuration, written below, is unique to your school's network only. If your school is blocked at the district level, this HTTP header is then unique to the district network.X-YouTube-Edu-Filter:4gvIYKewE7DDa88P7XzQTw

Option B: Create URL parameter rewrite rule

If your firewall or filter does not support HTTP header modification, please rewrite all outgoing URLs to youtube.com by appending the parameter “edufilter” at the end.Example:

http://youtube.com/?edufilter=4gvIYKewE7DDa88P7XzQTw
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk&edufilter=4gvIYKewE7DDa88P7XzQTw

Exclude the &edufilter parameter from these file types: .css, .gif, .png, .js, .xml

Step 2

Remove YouTube domain blocks

Ensure the following top-level domains are not blocked:

Step 3

Adjust Settings and See Additional Resources

Your network should now be able to access the YouTube for Schools version of YouTube.com. You can grant unrestricted access to additional YouTube accounts (such as teachers) and approve additional videos for viewing in your school.

To Add More Videos for Viewing Within your School: Simply add each video you want to make accessible from within your school to a playlist on the administrator account. You can create as many playlists as you need and all playlists created on the school administrator account will be accessible for viewing within the school network. To learn more about playlists, including how to create them, visit this page.
To Propose Additional Channels to Add to YouTube EDU: We'd love to hear from you if you find a great educational channel you think schools around the world should be able to access as part of YouTube for Schools. Please first check YouTube EDU to confirm that the channel is not currently included in our corpus of educational. If it's not, please let us know more about the channel by filling in this form.
To Access Additional Information on YouTube for Schools: Please visit our FAQ, which we update regularly. If you're interested in connecting with other schools that are part of YouTube for Schools, please join the Google Group. If you have any questions or problems, please see our help forum.

Re: Youtube Edu

keklund — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:46:19 GMT

I have been hoping for this functionality for some time, via URL-rewrite - I'll link in the other community thread.

So far, best I have been able to come up with is forcing NAT for our students out a specific interface, and using a transparent proxy to modify that traffic.

URL-rewrite would also allow forced Google Safesearch - we had it ages ago in our BlueCoat Proxy - surprised PA dos not have a solution for this yet.

Re: Youtube Edu

jdaniel — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 21:53:18 GMT

I second that, keklund - PAN seems to have a huge hole in their list of useful features where K-12 support is concerned. Where is YouTubeEDU functionality? Why no forced Google SafeSearch like that offered by other vendors?

Re: Youtube Edu

dyang — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 01:49:21 GMT

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the feedback. As mentioned in our other forum, support for both YouTube for Schools and Google SafeSearch are things that we're looking at. I'll provide updates as they become available.

Thanks,

Doris

Re: Youtube Edu

almay — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 18:57:27 GMT

Will be waiting to see this functionality. Our school district would benefit from this immensely.

Re: Youtube Edu

Jedigeek5 — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:50:18 GMT

Does this URL filtering custom category not work for you:

https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/message/14412#14412

Re: Youtube Edu

almay — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:05:01 GMT

Access to this place or content is restricted

Re: Youtube Edu

Jedigeek5 — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:10:40 GMT

Here's the text, I will test this later today:

Hey all,

i just figured this out and wanted to share right away with everyone as i'm sure we'll get more calls on this from our clients that are in education, this is in reference to case # 73636 where the client wanted to allow youtube.com/education and content but block just youtube.com

1. above the student "Block youtube and facebook" policy rule with a URL filtering profile to block youtube.com and facebook.com we added a security policy that had a custom url category "youtube education" in the destination URL field applied to the policy with no URL-Filtering profile applied. we also had app signatures of youtube-base, youtube, web-browsing, ssl, flash, and http-video applied to the rule

2. the custom URL category "Youtube education" had the following URL / wildcard combinations in it.

www.youtube.com/education
www.youtube.com/watch?*&feature=edu
www.youtube.com/course?*&feature=edu
www.youtube.com/watch?*&feature=edu&list=*
*.youtube.com/videoplayback?*

3. the Client was able to validate that he could reach and play all education related videos but was still getting blocked on non-education videos.

Re: Youtube Edu

Jedigeek5 — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 13:34:03 GMT

This worked fine for the YouTube education channel, but it does overblock a bit. It also doesn't work well for individual university videos (they seem to be their own channels, not in the educational path).

Re: Youtube Edu

jdaniel — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:18:53 GMT

Google has decided to do things the least URL-filter-friendly way, and asks YouTube EDU subscribers to tack on "&edufilter=4gvIYKewE7DDa88P7XzQTw" (or whatever your personal school code is) TO THE END OF THE URL. The problem with PAN OS is that it doesn't do URL rewrites, so we'd have to add a separate web proxy to our network and reroute all web traffic through it before heading out the PAN - if a user tacks on the &edufilter text, YouTube doesn't include it in any of its link URLs. Yes, we could watch a generic "education" channel, however YouTube EDU allows a school to customize the list of what they consider to have merit, rather than rely on a single body to decide what is appropriate for everything from K-12 to PhD students under one umbrella "/education" channel that could be easily dealt with by the PAN.

Re: Youtube Edu

polgarm — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 13:29:52 GMT

Dorris,

Are there any updates? Our school district desperately needs the functionality.

-Mitch

Re: Youtube Edu

epstech — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 19:45:28 GMT

Same here! and I know of another few school districts...

Re: Youtube Edu

dbenjamin — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 19:57:55 GMT

We are one of them. Our current system allows:

Override via ldap group.
User selectable override time.
Google Safe Search
YouTube for Schools

Re: Youtube Edu

bjackson — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 23:36:42 GMT

Is there any update to this? My education body is extremely interested in YoutubeEDU but Palo Alto do not seem to support this or offer any advice around this.

Re: Youtube Edu

forfarj — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 19:47:34 GMT

I second this request. We are looking for a way to access YoutubEDU at this time and are not able to do so with the PAN at this time. We are also struggling with the Google safesearch issue which could also be helped with URL rewrite...Anything??

Re: Youtube Edu

bmorrison — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:32:14 GMT

We currently have multiple School Systems that we manage that are looking at other devices since Palo-Alto does not support this.

Re: Youtube Edu

amansour — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:42:12 GMT

You mean the content re-write that takes users from Youtube.com to education.youtube.com?

We usually put this as it's own category and have the link on the block page as it is quite unique for school board.

Re: Youtube Edu

epstech — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:51:24 GMT

Last I read was that PA was going to plan to release the URL rewrite as many of the EDU environments have put in a request for that function. But I've seen no news of this since last. If you search for enforce safe search there are documents to do this for PANos 4.1 but it is not perfect. At this point I'm thinking of setting up an squid box to dod the rewrite. As there has been little interest from PA to do this. Yet there competitors can do it.. I love the firewall and its features but this has been a thorn in my side.

Re: Youtube Edu

amansour — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 19:04:45 GMT

Hey, I think I'm pretty close to a solution but I'm running into a problem. What I did was put a specific rule for Youtube the application. URL custom category for youtube.com to block. Then I have an allow list which takes each tokent (you tube .com /&blah education). On the response page I have an automatic redirect which takes the <url /> Field and appends the education component to it. The problem is it recursively redirects.

Re: Youtube Edu

MemphisBrothers — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 23:49:27 GMT

I urge Palo Alto to address this as soon as possible. I am the Network Admin for a private HS we could really use it. We deployed laptops to freshmen and have NO books. Our entire delivery system is through the device. Teachers use Youtube extensivly but students abuse the privelage. Currently I have to block Youtube for all stuidents and have teachers run the videos on the projector for in class and students access youtube from home openly.

Makes it hard for the journalism and broadcasting classes.