Dive Brief:

• It turns out that educators, not cats, might be the real stars of YouTube, with education videos topping even the popular “Pets and Animals” category for most views.
• YouTube videos from the likes of Khan Academy and CrashCourse are grabbing millions of views, as well as advertising dollars and grants from heavy hitters like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
• Many educational videos have also been compiled on the YouTube EDU channel, which is intended to help students of all ages direct their own education in an online community of other learners.

Dive Insight:

Despite their popularity, YouTube videos are not likely to replace classroom teaching. Most are focused on entertaining and engaging students — and potentially supplementing classroom learning. One YouTube educator noted a spike right around the May exam period.

“I can tell that students are currently freaking out and watching 20 episodes of CrashCourse chemistry back to back to back,” Hank Green, one of the two brothers than run popular channels CrashCourse and SciShow, told Forbes. That last-minute cramming helped more than triple his views in a single month.