- They love the ability to find videos on any subject from anywhere.
- They hate the ease that their students find distractions with YouTube videos that have nothing to do with school.
- They love that YouTube can be the broadcasting voice for anyone anywhere.
- They hate that some people who really don't know what they are talking about are also allowed to publish nonsense.
- They love that it is a free to use resource.
- They hate the proliferation of ads, especially inappropriate ones, that can't be controlled or muted.
The question has been, "How do I keep access to what I need my students to know without all the rest?" In the past, the answers were varied. Some districts block YouTube entirely. That is a little extreme, but it happens. Some create access for teachers, but not students. That works fine unless the students have smartphones that can get signal. Another approach was for a teacher to find the video she wanted, then download it from home using some browser extension, add-on, or website that saves YouTube's videos to the teacher's computer. That solves the other problems, but creates a new one. It is against YouTube's usage policy to download a copy of their videos. A third option was to use some browser extension or add-on to stream the video to the teacher's computer and to hide the unwanted distractions. Cleanr and A Cleaner YouTube both worked in the past, but are no longer available. ViewPure, http://viewpure.com/, fills the void and gets the job done easily.
ViewPure is a tool that can be added to the bookmarks toolbar of many browsers. Once there, a teacher can go to the YouTube video they want and click the Purify button in the bookmarks toolbar. The video will open in that window, but with only the video and no ads or related videos. What's more? The Search feature remains on the page. It is clean. It is easy to use. It is free. It just works. See screenshot examples below.
Without ViewPure
With ViewPure
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