YouTube Offers All Schools Education-Only Link, Beefs Up K-12 Content

All schools can now use the YouTube educational video site, youtube.com/education, without having to jump over Internet filtering hurdles.

For schools that choose to opt in to the YouTube for Schools Program, YouTube will redirect Web users who go to the site straight over to youtube.com/education. On this portion of the site, all comments are disabled and the only related videos are those that can be found in the Education portal of the site. The option has been created for parents, teachers, and administrators who fear children will be exposed to inappropriate materials on the site.

Teachers can choose from the hundreds of thousands of videos on YouTube EDU created by more than 600 partners like the Smithsonian, TED, Steve Spangler Science, and Numberphile.

After two months of piloting the YouTube For Schools program with more than 100 schools across the country, the program is now available to any school that wants to use it. Schools can sign up at youtube.com/schools.

And as promised, the site has been beefed up with content specific to K-12 education -- thousands of more videos curated by teachers that align with Common Core Standards, according to Angela Lin, head of YouTube Edu. More than 200 playlists have been designated by subject -- math, science, social studies, and English language arts -- and by grade level. Teachers can find them listed out at youtube.com/teachers, the site launched in September that shows teachers how to use videos in classrooms. Teachers can also suggest their own education playlist on the site.

"Teachers have been through part of a months-long process watching videos to identify what make sense, what aligns with common core standards, and videos that they want to show in their own classrooms, whether it's a great kick-off video to a subject or to demonstrate concepts," Lin said. "The site is now gives teachers a way to find relevant content that's easier and more efficient."

YouTube is also partnering with education content-creators: The company is investing in 100 channels and content creators that will produce original programming exclusive to YouTube. The TED Education channel, for example, will include videos that are exclusive to the YouTube player, meaning that they won't be available on Hulu or other online video platforms.

"We’re helping seed new channels in this space," Lin said.

Videos from education organizations like the Spangler Effect, Numberphile, DeepSky Videos, and Crash Course will be on the Education site. Others include:

SCIENCE

• Newton's laws of motion - OK Go - Rube Goldberg Machine
• Experiments - Steve Spangler - Oozing pumpkin experiment
• Light - minutephysics - There is no pink light

MATH

• Sums of infinite series - Vihart - Infinity Elephants
• Pythagorean theorem - PatrickJMT - Pythagorean Theorem

ENGLISH

Shakespeare - Open University - The History of English

To sign up for the Education network setting, network administrators can go to youtube.com/schools. They'll fill out a form and receive an authentication key that allows them to modify the http header. If YouTube is blocked, as it is in most schools, they can unblock the domain because all YouTube.com links will be redirected directly to youtube.com/education.

This article is updated to clarify that YouTube is not creating content, but partnering with those that create content.