Google Expands YouTube’s Suite of Services for Schools

By WARREN BUCKLEITNER

Say the word “YouTube” to most teachers and you’ll get the type of cringe reserved for a ringing cellphone. Google, which owns YouTube, would like change that with a new network setting designed to give schools more control over what their students see when they visit the video site from a classroom or library PC.
Introduced last week, YouTube for Schools achieves this with special line of code called an HTTP header, designed to let a school network administrator direct YouTube requests to the school’s YouTube portal. For technical details, see this support page. This ability to button-down YouTube reduces the chance that a student can wander into the sea of distraction. According Angela Lin, the head of YouTube Edu, “This marks a major advance in the unfolding YouTube.edu story. By cordoning off YouTube searches instead of just blocking them, elementary and secondary teachers can start using YouTube to support their lessons.”
According to Lin, other new teacher-friendly features include the ability to search by subject and grade a variety of rich learning content like the TED talks. I asked her to provide examples:
Doodling in Math Class: Infinity Elephants
Malcolm Gladwell on Happiness
MIT’s Introduction to Computer Science
Monumental Adventure: Confucius Temple
Newton’s Laws of Motion – OK Go – Rube Goldberg Machine
The Pythagorean Theorem
Population Growth – National Geographic – World’s Population
Shakespeare – Open University – The History of English
Steve Spangler’s Oozing Pumpkin Experiment
Note that this service is only available in the United States and Canada.

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