YouTube that has recently changed its design is rolling out a new service for teachers and students titled ‘YouTube for Schools’. The hub will help curate education materials and videos on subjects such as history and math while filtering out potentially offensive or unnecessary content. 

Previously, teachers prohibited YouTube at schools, because the portal videos distract students from the educational process but now the site will also act as a network setting that allows schools to grant access to over 450,000 of education materials on YouTube EDU.

Brian Truong, YouTube Product Manager explaines in a blog post:

“We’ve been hearing from teachers that they want to use the vast array of educational videos on YouTube in their classrooms, but are concerned that students will be distracted by the latest music video or cute cat, or a video that wasn’t appropriate for students. While schools that restrict access to YouTube may solve this distraction concern, they also limit access to hundreds of thousands of educational videos on YouTube that could help bring photosynthesis to life, or show what life was like in ancient Greece.”

Teachers can also create individual playlists which they can share with their class. These videos can be pulled from any part of YouTube.

To launch the project, YouTube worked with teachers and 600 organizations such as the Smithsonian and TED to select and curate the available content. The videos are sorted by grade level and subject including Science, English, Math, Social Studies, Foreign languages and more.

YouTube for Schools is free to use and is aimed to make the site an open conversation.