Live Streaming
Live streaming school events has become more popular over the last several years as it can offer families the ability to view school activities they might not be able to otherwise, due to a variety of circumstances including:
Venue capacity
Work or home schedules
Health restrictions
For schools that want to live stream school events, the two Division supported platforms are Google Meet and YouTube. Each platform has benefits; as such it is up to the school to identify which tool meets their needs and to follow any required privacy processes for the selected platform.
Google Meet
YouTube Live
Google Meet is the most secure option as it can be used to restrict event access to users with Division accounts. For events such as Student Conferences, Meet the Teacher, or Open houses, Google Meet is often the best choice to ensure control over these meetings as they may contain more sensitive or personal information.
For many school specific events, the school can use Google Meet to host live events. Students and parents can attend using the child's EPSB account to join the Meet, ensuring that only the correct people are attending events. This method works especially well for virtual school conferences or Meet the Teacher events which can occur when students are at home.
For events during the school day, parents can provide personal Google Account information to book a Meet. This requires the school to schedule meetings and may require staff to admit personal GMail accounts to the Meet but does provide additional security.
YouTube Live streaming is for events that are traditionally public including sporting event and holiday concerts. YouTube streams are fully public, removing most barriers for families. As this is a public stream, there are additional privacy and FOIP considerations to attend to when using YouTube for streaming school events.
When Using YouTube for streaming ensure that all students that will be shown during the livestream have a FOIP consent in place and that guardian notification about the event has occurred. For parents that have indicated that they do not want their child's image or information on the Internet in any way, these wishes must be respected and their child must not be included in the live stream.
As a public platform, YouTube has a number of community and copyright rules that must be followed during any live performances. This includes rules related to the rebroadcast of any copyrighted materials including music, images and video clips.
Additional support materials related to using Google Meet for these types of events has been created by Communications and Technology Information Management and are shared below and on Connect.
Additional support materials related to using YouTube for these types of events has been created by Technology Information Management and are shared below and on Connect.