YouTube EDU aims to make education interactive!
In a discerning move to make education more interactive and accessible, online platform YouTube has taken to the digital sphere to offer parents an alternative to aid with their children’s learning and development.
Aptly dubbed YouTube EDU, a core objective supporting the mission is to inform, inspire and make education entertaining. The platform brings to the fore some of the top lectures and prestigious partnerships with leading institutions across the world.
Angela Lin, YouTube EDU’s manager speaks to theAsianparent.com to discuss how this evolution has worked to change lives and create waves in learning and education space. Read on for the full exclusive interview right here.
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Bringing learning to life
theAsianparent (TAP): What are the core objectives of YouTube EDU and how is the platform in line with the goal to offer parents an effective tool to aid with their child’s education?
Angela Lin (AL): YouTube EDU offers parents, teachers and schools flexible and elastic approaches to manage and leverage videos as value-added educational tools. Just as a teacher uses books or diagrams to supplement the lectures, videos are a powerful educational resource that can bring learning to life.
We live in a world overflowing with amazing technology and online resources — especially when it comes to video. So it makes sense to think turn to video to redefine the educational experience and make it more engaging powerful.
Getting started
TAP: What would parents need to do to start using YouTube EDU — to cater to their kid’s everyday learning and development needs?
AL: Parents can use YouTube EDU as a free and easy-to-use educational resource and they can simply go to https://www.youtube.com/education to get started.
Through YouTube EDU, parents gain easy access a wide variety of primary and secondary education videos that they can use personally tailor playlists for their kids to watch. These playlists are great for ‘passback viewing.’
After creating a playlist, parents can easily load it on to any Internet-connected device and pass it along to their children — we’ve heard it’s great for trips, even if it’s just a short bus ride into town! To learn more about how to build a playlist on YouTube, read here.
We know it’s important for children to stay safe online so we’ve made it easy for parents to turn on the Safety Mode on YouTube. With it, users have the option of not seeing age-restricted or sensitive materials while using YouTube. With that said, parents with kids under 13 should watch the videos alongside their children.
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A global learning platform
TAP: How is the extensive traffic which the site sees now indicative of how the face of education has changed and is continuing to evolve and how is this significant?
AL: The more significant metric here is that 80% of YouTube EDU views come from outside of the United States, which reinforces YouTube EDU’s position as a global classroom — it gives people around the world access to great educational content, so that everyone connected to the net can simply get online and learn.
What makes YouTube EDU unique is that even though it is a global platform, it’s also a local classroom at the same time. Local academic institutions can also use YouTube EDU improve how and who they share with their communities.
Taking it step-by-step
TAP: Not all parents may know how to fully leverage the instrument as an education tool. What easy-to-understand guidelines are available to help facilitate this process?
AL: We provide some easy-to-use guidelines for teachers at www.youtube.com/teachers, which parents may also use to get started on how to use YouTube EDU as an educational tool.
We know how busy parents and teachers are, and that searching through thousands of videos sounds like a daunting visit to the world’s largest library.
Therefore, we’ve 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.
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Beneficial partnerships for effective study
TAP: How do the partnerships with the more than 400 colleges and universities signed on with YouTube EDU work and what is core outline of the programmes offered?
AL: Content providers can apply to be YouTube EDU partners online through the YouTube Partner Program site. Signing up is easy, and membership is free.
When content creators apply to become YouTube EDU partners, we look for videos that can educate, engage and inspire people.
Our goal is to create a broad range of educational platform that people around the world can access in order to learn and grow.
For more on this, watch this video:
About Angela Lin:
YouTube EDU’s Angela Lin touches on the benefits of the digital platform
Angela Lin oversees all things education at YouTube, including content strategy, partnerships and original programming. Her work reaches across the learning spectrum from K12 to higher ed to lifelong learning, featuring educational content that ranges from purely academic to wildly inspirational.
