Youtube Edu

[jott]

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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:

• youtube.com
• ytimg.com

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.

[keklund]

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.

[jdaniel]

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?

[dyang]

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

[almay]

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

[Jedigeek5]

Does this URL filtering custom category not work for you:

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

[almay]

Access to this place or content is restricted

[Jedigeek5]

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.

[Jedigeek5]

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).

[jdaniel]

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.

[polgarm]

Dorris,

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

-Mitch

[epstech]

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

[dbenjamin]

We are one of them.  Our current system allows:

1. Override via ldap group.
2. User selectable override time.
3. Google Safe Search
4. YouTube for Schools

[bjackson]

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.

[forfarj]

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??