Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Google Domain and YouTube

My school district blocked YouTube until the end of the last school year. Because of that I only used YouTube occasionally when I wanted to post a video quickly on my blog, website, or wiki. Since it was for students and parents to view from home, YouTube was the best option. I also use SchoolTube, TeacherTube, and Vimeo. Now that my district has a Google domain, YouTube is no longer blocked, and YouTube can be tied into your Google account I found I became stuck in a position that may be valuable for others to know about. Since October I have been using YouTube through my school Google account. It was nice because I had a personal YouTube account and a school YouTube account.

Then two days ago, wonderful Richard Byrne, tweeted about one of my articles from this blog. What do you know? All of a sudden there are retweets, tons of hits on my blog, and subscribers to my somewhat new school YouTube channel. So cool!!! Then I realized that I should check to see if I could add another email address to my school YouTube account. That way if I lost my school email address some day, I would have an option to keep posting videos for those who, so excitingly to me, subscribed to my videos. Turns out there is nothing that can be done. If I ever left my district, not that I plan to because I love my job, I would no longer have control of my school YouTube account. I am glad that I figured this out before it was too late and too hard to fix. I am hoping that this post will help those teachers who also have been using YouTube through their school district's Google domain.

I added a video to my school YouTube channel asking people to subscribe to my n13gleason channel and posted a statement in a few different places. I tried to change settings to get rid of the subscribe button. I think that only made it so that subscribers are no longer visible. If anyone else has any other ideas, I would love to hear/read about them and I hope this article helps others from making the same mistake I did. A lot of school districts are moving towards Google domains and for the most part Google Apps can be shared with more than one email address giving it's user the opportunity to control their work and content from other accounts, unfortunately not with YouTube.

Just because I like to post a video or picture with all of my articles, here is my sad and quickly made YouTube video asking viewers to subscribe to my n13gleason channel instead of my school one. Enjoy!!!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the post. Our school uses Google Apps for Ed but has decided not to tie You Tube into the system. These means that we are having to use our own accounts. I was complaining about this inside my head but your post made me realize that maybe it is not such a bad idea not to have access.

    I think I am going to set up You Tube accounts for each Grade Level and try it that way. So many of my teachers are wanting to use You Tube but want some control also.

    You have given me something to think about. Thanks

    PS. I just posted to the Blogmeister Account some questions about the evernote video because I had not yet found this blog.

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    1. You are welcome. Glad to help others know how Google Apps for Ed works with YouTube. Some people are probably OK with their content belonging to an organization. Just good to know what you are getting into ahead of time. If your teachers want control of what students load, they may want to look at Schooltube.

      Thanks for the questions. I posted my answers to your questions in the comment section of my article about Using Evernote for Fluency posted on this blog.

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