Blow out birthday candles, YouTube has just turned 20!
With its 2.1 billion users, YouTube is by far the biggest video platform on the net. For many people YouTube is not only a source of entertainment but also a source of income and for many teachers it’s also a source of material to use in class. In 20 years it has become a big part of our life.
It was registered on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of the American e-commerce company PayPal. They had the idea that ordinary people would enjoy sharing their “home videos.” The company is headquartered in San Bruno, California.
Shortly after the site opened on a limited (“beta”) basis in May 2005, it was attracting some 30,000 visitors per day. By the time YouTube was officially launched on December 15, 2005, it was serving more than two million video views each day. By January 2006 that number had increased to more than 25 million views. The number of videos available at the site surpassed 25 million in March 2006, with more than 20,000 new videos uploaded on a daily basis. By the summer of 2006, YouTube was serving more than 100 million videos per day, and the number of videos being uploaded to the site showed no sign of slowing down. (Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/YouTube)
Even if the most popular YouTube videos based on total global views in 2025 are nursery rhymes or songs, there are several viral videos that can be used to teach English. Kevin Allocca is YouTube’s Head of Culture & Trends and in 2011 he gave a Ted Talk on the reasons why some videos go viral.
Without any doubt, YouTube has changed the way teachers teach since it is a multifaceted platform that affects the core process of teaching and learning uniquely in multiple ways. On the one hand YouTube is an opportunity for formal and informal education. Especially in the time of COVID-19 or in particularly remote areas, this platform gained increased attention to support teachers and students in distance learning. Educational institutions and professional organizations are posting full lectures and rich materials on YouTube, making learning content more accessible than ever (Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, YouTube and Education: A Scoping Review, 2022, IEEE Vol X). But on the other hand YouTube has the form of a social medium and this means that everybody is potentially able to upload videos. This means that the quality has considerably different levels.
Anyway the potential of YouTube in education was crystal clear already at the beginning of its history so that in 2009 YouTube EDU was created. The main purpose is to serve as a central hub for high-quality educational videos, making them easier to find and it collects videos from major partners like PBS, Khan Academy, TED, and various universities.
Nowadays there are different websites and platforms that offer a wide range of tools to adapt, personalize or modify YouTube videos and make them perfect for classroom use.
The most popular website is edpuzzle.com
Edpuzzle turns any video into an interactive lesson by letting teachers embed questions, audio notes, and comments, allowing them to crop videos and track student engagement and comprehension in real-time, making video learning active and assessable.
A different website with more functions is wevideo.com but unfortunately the free trial is extremely short.
It offers more diverse question types (like fill-in-the-blank and matching) and allows for complex “branching” (where a student’s answer determines what part of the video they see next).
H5P.com is an open-source tool that is incredibly powerful. It allows you to create interactive videos with “hotspots” (clickable areas) and cross-platform integrations. It’s often used by those who want more creative control than Edpuzzle provides.
In conclusion, YouTube combined with platforms that allow teachers to personalize videos and embed exercises, could really personalized learning experiences.