Google and Khan Academy have teamed up with a contest to discover new educational YouTube talent.

When You Tube first came on the scene who would have thought that it would become an important force in education as well as kitten videos?

The fact is that it has - and while Salman Khan is perhaps the person who has had most to do with this phenomenon there aer plenty of others who have uploaded educational videos. According to the You Tube blog announcing the contest:

In the last year, you all spent 50% more time learning from YouTube Education’s 700,000 videos, and the number of subscribers to YouTube’s educational channels more than doubled.

To meet the ever-increasing demand for educational content on You Tube, a contest has been launched to find:  people with a talent for explaining tough concepts in compelling ways, and the passion and drive to assemble a global classroom of students

A total of 10 YouTube Next EDU Gurus will be chosen by a panel of judges from both Khan Academy and YouTube’s Education team. One of these 10 will also be awarded the Khan Academy EDU Guru Prize.

Vi Hart, whose maths videos we've found inspiring enough to share on several occasions, has produced this video to launch the contest:

To understand the rules it's probably better to read through the Guidelines.

One restriction that is causing an understandable amount of negative comment is that the competition is restricted to a small number of countries: US, Canada (apart from Quebec), UK, Ireland, Australia & New Zealand.

The rules also stipulate that you own a YouTube channel that has monetization enabled for at least 50% of all videos in the channel library and that 50% or more of your Channel video uploads from September 13, 2011 to September 13, 2012 must be educational in nature, as determined by Google. Conditions that seem a bit strange.

Entrant must be at least 18 and be available and able to attend the three-day Workshop from October 17-19, 2012 in San Bruno, California. Expenses-paid attendance at this workshop is part of the prize which also consists of a $1000 B&H gift card for production equipment.

The deadline for this competition is October 1 and to enter you need some appropriate videos on your You Tube channel and write two short essays (fewer than 200 words) to answer the questions:

• Why [do] you want to be a part of the YouTube Next EDU Guru program?
• What are your specific plans for growing your YouTube channel in the next two years?

There seems to be no end in sight to the explosion in online education at all levels and if this initiative succeeds in stimulating the production of high-quality content then we will all be winners in this contest.