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Best money spent - Apologia Biology DVD


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Apologia Biology has a DVD you can purchase to go along with the text. The instructor  goes over all the concepts in the order they are in the book. She uses a lot of visuals as she is talking to explain and illustrate concepts as well. This has been the best money spent this year. I do not have to remind my DD to do her work. She looks forward to doing each days assignment.

 

Just wanted to put this out there for others that may be interested in this resource. I hope they offer the DVD to go along with chemistry as well.

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My daughter enjoyed using it last year, especially with some of the embedded videos included with lessons and being able to click on the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. We had it rather than the hard copy of the textbook. The only thing that bothered me was not having the text to pull off the shelf to quickly flip through to look for information.

 

Erica in OR

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My daughter enjoyed using it last year, especially with some of the embedded videos included with lessons and being able to click on the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. We had it rather than the hard copy of the textbook. The only thing that bothered me was not having the text to pull off the shelf to quickly flip through to look for information.

 

Erica in OR

Although now that I'm reading further in the thread - ours is not an instructor, but a dvd-based version of the text (which is what my daughter used and enjoyed). Two different animals?

 

Erica in OR

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Although now that I'm reading further in the thread - ours is not an instructor, but a dvd-based version of the text (which is what my daughter used and enjoyed). Two different animals?

 

Erica in OR

 

I think this is new.  It's a live instructor, traveling across the world, doing labs etc.

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  • 3 weeks later...

We've used Apologia for the younger years.  However, I am somewhat concerned about a possible over emphasis on YEC.  Can anyone comment on how much this is addressed in either from the text or videos?

 

Thanks,

Edited by dereksurfs
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  • 2 weeks later...

It has been a few years since I looked at Apologia upper level science and those video samples are great!  I hadn't even seen the student notebook which looks pretty cool, too.  I'm also not of the YE variety, so I'm interested in commentary on that, too...although we are creationists so it's not a huge deal.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am sorry, I cannot really comment on the books and videos as DD is doing this on her own. I asked her about it and her responce was" we are not talking about the earth. They do not really mention that." I hope this is helpful.

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Thank you for mentioning this. Most of my kids did great with just the textbook, but dd is struggling. I had been looking for some helps for her.

Another resource I used was th biology 101 dvd. I really enjoyed the way he presented biology to line up with the days of creation. He was very engaging and we had several aha moments when he explained classification.

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It has been a few years since I looked at Apologia upper level science and those video samples are great!  I hadn't even seen the student notebook which looks pretty cool, too.  I'm also not of the YE variety, so I'm interested in commentary on that, too...although we are creationists so it's not a huge deal.

 

I'm a creationist but not a YEC.  I figure that we don't know how God did what he did, thus I don't find anything in the world of science that would disprove the existence of God.  My daughter, who sees it pretty much the same as I do, used Apologia Biology in an academy setting and they did not even discuss any in-the-beginning arguments. They did skip the evolution chapter which  is where the YEC philosophy comes to the surface. The rest of Apologia Biology pretty much covered biology  from the perspective of...well...biology. Plants, animals, bacteria...all that stuff.

 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

 

We were toying with the idea of purchasing Red Wagon Tutorials flash drive for biology.

 

 

We used RWT live for a year.

Mr. Rosenoff is a bit abrasive with students (and parents).

I would not ever do another live class with him.

 

I also toyed with the idea of getting the flash drive through Rainbow Resource at a discounted price (now no longer available) for two reasons only:

1 - the fill-in the blank notes

2 - the help with writing a formal lab report

 

I am not sure Mr. Rosenoff's instruction is as wonderful as some others make it out to be, which is why I would only buy the flash drive at a deep discount.

 

Don't know if that helps at all.

 

If you follow his company page on facebook, you'll get a good feel for who he is. I stopped following a few months ago if that tells you anything. Seeing his back and forth rants with customers on his page turned me off. I think that he is not a well man. 

 

That said, he may be a genius with science. I don't know.

But I do know that I would rather have a teacher who is only "so-so" with science but who has a teaching heart and strong moral character over a man who is brilliant with science but demeans those who disagree with him.

 

Anyway... ;)

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I have also looked at the Apologia videos.

I think these would be great - except I think that they are not quite as engaging as they could be and for that much money, I think I'll stick with the you tube videos we find to correspond to the lessons. :)

Still, the new videos may fill a need that a lot of families have. :)

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Just chiming in- we started Apologia Biology a few weeks ago and so far it's a hit. I purchased the book, student notebook and DVDs from Rainbow Resouce. My only complaint is that the DVD snippets aren't listed by day, but by segment. You have to outline what segments are to be watched (unless I missed something) in your lesson plan. I simply copied the lesson plans in the front of the student notebook and then wrote the video numbers in the margin and handed dd a copy. Beyond that dd is completely self sufficient. Now that she has the videos matched to the lessons she's been fine on her own. I try to help prep with the experiments but love that they're on DVD so I don't have to hover if they other kids need me. We tried leaving Apologize last year but I will say so far I think we are happy to be back.

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We are young earth and always have been, I did research and such 20 some years ago and believe this way. I'm not getting into all of hows, why, what's, etc here though. Despite that belief, we've used some curricula and read books over the years that don't line up with the young earth part but do believe in creationism by one God and we had no problem with using it. I felt it necessary for my kids to know about all beliefs, at least in some detail, so they knew why I believed the way I do. We've allowed and encouraged our kids to decide on their own what they believe. If I were to use something that believed in evolution or other ideas of how the earth came to be then it would be a problem.

 

I say all of this just to make the point that it shouldn't be too much of a problem whether it's young earth or not, as long as it is creation based by God. This is all my opinion and I'm in no way trying to sway others in one direction and I'm not commenting anymore on why we believe in young earth.

 

I will add that I do believe it's important to know about evolution and the theory behind it when teaching my kids. My 18 year old son, who just graduated high school this year, had gotten so fed up with a science teacher who wouldn't allow anyone to talk about, ask questions, or even say the word creationism in class that he walked out of class one day after being told by the teacher that he would get an F on his assignment if the word creationism was in it. He fought that and was allowed by the school to get up and give a talk about why he believed the way he did. He knew about the other secular and Christian beliefs about the creation of the world and spoke of these with his counter evidence for creationism. His teacher never bothered him again and 3 friends in his class who didn't believe in God asked if he would get together with them to talk about these things. My son and 2 of his Christian friends met with the 3 non-Christian friends for the spring semester talking about this stuff and one of them accepted Christ, while the other 2 said that they are curious and feel that they wished that science in schools would teach creationism so they would know it better.

 

Just my 2 cent bunny trail. ðŸ‡ðŸ‡ðŸ‡

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Do they have these for General or Physical?

Not to my knowledge. I went on their website just now and didn't see those as options, although I was on my phone so maybe I missed it. General and Physical both offer the media CD- ROM, but in my experience those aren't super useful. I think it's pretty much a high school level offering.

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  • 2 weeks later...

How long are the video segments? Are they little snippets or full lecture? I can't tell from the sample

 

thanks!

They're snippets. I would say they average maybe 5 minutes each, so they would watch a few for each reading assignment. The labs are their own segment and are a bit longer. For daily assignments I would guesstimate they average 15-20 minutes a day. Sometimes much shorter. If I have time tonight I will try and post a sample screen shot of the lessons I have lined up with the videos from my computer.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm creating an excel file that correlates the videos to the reading schedule provided in the beginning of the Student Notebook. I've done Modules 1-4 so far, so figured I would share them here on Google Docs and save everyone else the work since a couple of people have requested it. I will hopefully have the rest of the modules retyped this week and will update the post then. If you catch any errors let me know. Spell check almost died with all of the names. :)

 

Hope this link works- I haven't ever posted to google docs before! 

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y2Ozsijs4iF4Y0NSRKS46_FUonCEmMjGuKnQGttjRqs/edit?usp=sharing

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