The website for Sesame Street now offers hundreds of video clips from the show’s early years. Grownups all over the world are getting back in touch with their inner six-year-olds by watching Bert rave about his bottle cap collection or Cookie Monster go on a rampage. But the main goal of the project is to improve the way Sesame Street’s educational messages are delivered to actual six-year-olds and their teachers. “The show started 40 years ago because they knew kids were using television and they wanted to give them something worthwhile to watch,” says Miles Ludwig, a VP and digital producer at Sesame Workshop. “Now we have the same feeling about the internet.”

Guy Smiley

Sesame Street characters have been mainstays of K-5 classrooms for decades because they have the power to make little kids sit still and pay attention. Sesame Workshop is a not-for-profit group that encourages teachers to use its characters freely, but quality control issues have arisen in the last few years. “About 18,000 Sesame Street clips are posted on YouTube,” says Ludwig. “Some of them are of really poor quality, and some of them manipulate the characters in ways that young children should not see. We wanted to make a free service so people can use Sesame Street the way it should be used.”

The current video section of the site is a beta version. When the full version launches this summer, Ludwig says that teachers will be able to search Sesame Street clips by character, topic, or curricular goals. He also anticipates an area where registered users will be able to save clips and remember their favorites. “I was born in 1968, and Grover can still make me laugh or cry. It’s powerful stuff,” he says. “Now people who grew up with the show will be able to introduce it to their children.”