Schools across the country commonly block access to YouTube, shielding students from the irresistible distractions of, say, the cat in a T-shirt playing a piano , or worse. So in December, Google started YouTube for Schools, offering schools the ability to pluck only the videos they want, scrubbed of all comments and linked only to other related educational videos. The program gives schools the ability to allow access to the YouTube EDU educational library, and to specific videos within its own network — while blocking the general site.
That has enabled teachers to bring popular educational videos from YouTube into classrooms, like the famous TED talk on population growth by Hans Rosling, the Swedish data presentation expert, or a series of hugely popular short videos about each element of the periodic table that somehow turns a rote memorization exercise into gripping entertainment.
Slowly but surely, schools are taking down some of the barriers. "We’re really excited about it here," said John Connolly, educational technology director for the Chicago Public Schools, which began allowing teachers to use YouTube for Schools last month. "We’re making content and tools available to our teachers to help them increase and enhance their teaching."
Chicago is perhaps the largest school district to loosen its restrictions, but school technology administrators say it is just a matter of time until more barriers fall. At a time when financially ailing states are slashing public education budgets and there is mounting evidence of a widening achievement gap between rich and poor students, schools can ill afford to turn off a free source of credible, often premium, educational tools.
Robert Gulick, director of technology in the Washington Local Schools in Toledo, Ohio, said, "If we didn’t have a system for filtering it, we couldn’t partake, but we do now, and at a time of declining resources, it is a great way to find additional materials."
Schools in the Toledo district previously allowed limited use of YouTube videos in class, but the process was cumbersome. Teachers logged onto a filtering system, and submitted a video for review by the technology department. If approved, the video could been viewed in the district’s "safe videos library."
The new YouTube portal has made that process redundant, Dr. Gulick said. "Now students can safely explore on their own, and teachers are networking privately within grade level and building, sharing resources they’ve found," he said.
In school districts where YouTube is blocked, teachers sometimes go to great lengths to show videos that they believe enhance their lessons.
"It can be a challenge," said Jesse Spevack, assistant principal at the NYC iSchool in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan, which limits students’ ability to navigate and post on the Web from computers in classrooms and labs. "I’ve tried opening the window and loading the video on a laptop, or bringing a video in on my phone — or just asking the kids in my class, because there’s always some proxy hack site that a student will know how to use."
When those techniques fail, he puts links to lessons on Khan Academy , TED talk videos and HipHughesHistory , a set of history-related videos created by a history teacher in Buffalo, on the class Web site, and asks students to view them outside of school.
Mr. Spevack said he understands New York City’s policy. "There is a lot of stuff on YouTube I wouldn’t be comfortable with my students seeing," he said, "so I think trying to set up a way to differentiate content that is useful to schools and teachers from everything else is an awesome idea."
Teachers have proved to be Google’s best emissaries for the filtering system, said Angela Lin, head of YouTube EDU. "The challenge now is getting these enthusiastic individual teachers to work with administrators and I.T. staff to make this a reality."
Google has begun to create and solicit new channels in the hope of increasing its appeal. For instance, TED, a nonprofit group that works to spread the ideas of thought leaders from around the world, on Monday will start a channel that will eventually have hundreds of videos as part of a new educational initiative.
Brady Haran, the producer of the Deep Sky astronomy videos and Numberphile math videos, will develop two of the channels. "I don’t really think of them as lessons or teaching," he said of his videos. "It’s far more useful to show something that’s tangential to the lesson, but supports it."
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