YouTube offers great educational content; however, there is also a lot of inappropriate material. Material that includes racy images and offensive comments. Due to the inappropriate material often found on YouTube many schools block access to the site. A new internet service from the internet security company M86 aims to solve the problem encountered by these schools.
“Called VuSafe (www.m86vusafe.com), it’s a free website that lets educators search for relevant video content from YouTube and other sources…” (p. 25. eSchool News, Vol. 12 No. 3). The site also allows educators to add clips and then share them with their students. Ralph Olmolinski states, “It is the perfect solution for schools to safely integrate videos into the classroom for teaching purposes” (p. 25 eSchool News). Once teachers register on VuSafe, they can search and the preview video clips. They can then add clips they think are relevant for use in the classroom to their school’s VuSafe video library. As teachers add videos they can tag the clips by subject and age-appropriateness. Students can view the video clips from home or from school. Teachers can share videos and suggest videos that are safe. “Any time a video from YouTube or another source is played from the VuSafe library, it is stripped of all advertisements, comments and outside links, so educators don’t have to worry about students seeing something they shouldn’t” (p. 25. eSchoolNews).
VuSafe can be used without M86’s filtering software; however, schools that arent’ using M86’s web filter would have to unblock YouTube in order for the videos in the library to display at school. VuSafe is still in beta-testing mode, but schools can sign up for access any time.
Pierce. D. How to share YouTube videos at school, safely. (March 2011). eSchoolNews, Vol. 14, No. 3.
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