Embedded Content
Understanding Embedded Content
A common challenge for schools is the issue of embedded content. You might want to use a brilliant learning resource on a specific website, let's say a page from the BBC Bitesize or a museum's virtual tour. You've whitelisted (allowed) the main URL, but when students try to access it, the page or elements within it, appear broken or incomplete. Why?
The issue is that most interactive content on a website isn't hosted on the same URL. An educational website may have videos that are hosted on a platform like Vimeo or YouTube, or a news site might embed its social media feed directly from X (formerly Twitter). A standard filter would only recognize and allow the URL of the website itself (e.g., www.museum.org), but not the separate, underlying URLs of the embedded content (e.g., player.vimeo.com). Since these hosting platforms (X or Vimeo) are often blocked, the videos or social feeds won't load, rendering the entire page unusable for its intended purpose.
In order to help with this, SchoolProtect offers a feature called Embedded Content. Here you are able to allow streams/videos that are embedded within specified websites, whilst still blocking the main app itself e.g. block Vimeo but allow Vimeo videos to play within a particular learning resource. Please note, you can only use this feature if you have enabled HTTPS decryption.
All you need to do is enter the URL of the webpage with the embedded content that you want to allow (e.g. 'whiterosemaths.com'- no 'https://' required) and then you choose what you want to allow (embedded socials, videos or both) and choose the policies that you wish to apply this to.