YouTube for Schools stops kids watching cat videos, unless they’re educational

The world’s most popular video-sharing platform has rolled out a school-friendly version in an attempt to ensure that learners don’t get “distracted by the latest music video or a video of a cute cat, or a video that might not be appropriate for students”.

According to an official blog post, YouTube for Schools is “a network setting that school administrators can turn on to grant access only to the educational content from YouTube EDU”.

Explaining the importance of the project, YouTube product manager, Brian Trurong said “Sight, sound and motion have always had the power to engage students and complement classroom instruction by bringing educational topics to life”.

This means that pupils can still access the great educational content from the likes of TED, MIT, and the Khan Academy without having to worry that they’ll skip straight to the trailer for the new Twilight movie.

YouTube claims that it has also “worked with teachers to put together more than 300 playlists broken out by subject — Math, Science, Social Studies, and English Language Arts — and by grade level.”

As well as being able to access the playlists, YouTube claims that teachers can suggest their own educational playlists.

The Google-owned platform says that the initiative is part of its “ongoing efforts to make YouTube a truly educational resource”.

It cites its YouTube Space Lab programme as an example of its determination to “inspire learners around the world”.

The SpaceLab initiative challenges 14-18 year-old students to design a science experiment that can be performed in space. The two winning experiments will be conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and live streamed on YouTube.