DIRECT STUDENT LOAN

Is it true that once you start paying your fafsa direct loan while you are at school, you have to keep making payments? Or can you pay certain amount of money when you get some? Lets say I have 5000 loan dept and i am a third year student. By chance I managed to make 3000. Can I go head and pay the 3000 to my dept? Or if i start paying back my loan, i have to keep it up untill i am done.

My bank is PNC. Do I just give them the number for my local branch?

And also, how may one use it?

Sort of. these are gifts subject to gift tax and have to be reported on form 709. If your brother has made no other gifts in his lifetime, he won’t actually have to pay any tax.
It makes no difference whether he writes the check to you or to the bank. The only exception would have been if he’d paid your tuition directly to the school at the time you were enrolled.