S/O Great courses- how do you integrate them into your school day/curriculum?

[mamakven]

this is probably a dumb question.  do you just set aside time weekly or daily and treat it like a class?

[theelfqueen]

We listen when we are in the car

[Lawyer&Mom]

I think listening in the car is a great idea. Most of the courses I own are DVDs and it's really tiring to watch the (relatively) static image of a person standing behind a podium... In future I plan to do audio only unless visuals are absolutely necessary.

[Hilltopmom]

I schedule them as part of the school week.

We can't listen in the car, a little kid is always crying, it seems.

 

I recently got a few on audible that ds is going to listen to while walking on the track .

[Erica in OR]

DD finished her math course early for the year, so I'm having her watch the High School Geometry course to take up her math time for the rest of the school year, rather than starting the next book. She watches half a class daily.

 

Erica in OR

[Chrysalis Academy]

Yes, it's part of the weekly schedule. What is tricky is if we have them going in more than one subject, I have to figure out how to stagger them - I find it works best if we don't try to watch or listen to more than one on the same day.

[regentrude]

With DD we used to listen together in the car.

DS prefers to listen on his own, as part of school.

[SilverMoon]

For my super independent 10th grader, I merely list them on her weekly syllabi I wrote last summer and she covers them however she pleases.

 

For example, her geography syllabus looks something like this.

Week 26

-ch 10 in This Spine

-p. x-y in This Supplement

-Quiz b

-spend time on This Geography Program

-choose a recipe for This Country and prepare it

-Cultural and Culinary History lecture 26

 

She has a teacher planbook she uses as her personal student planner, and schedules those across the week as she sees fit. I check in occasionally to discuss content with her, grade tests, and make sure her syllabi are on track with the school year.

Edited March 16, 2016 by SilverMoon

[Hoot]

If they are part of a course, then I list them on the syllabus and ds listens to them during the week. We used to listen a lot in the car, but now that he has his own car and drives he listens during other times of the day instead.

[Jane Elliot]

Good question. If we want to watch the videos together, we do it while we eat lunch. Otherwise the kids watch them on their own. We listen to audios in the car. 

[Allearia]

Right now we aren't using any of them very formally. I often let them pick one to watch during lunch or after dinner. I hate audio books so I never listen to anything like that in the car, we have the video streaming subscription. I want my older to watch a math one two or three times a week, a sci fi lit one once a week, and I'm hoping to go through one of the history ones more systematically but right now he just chooses whatever he likes.

[swimmermom3]

We usually have at least one course going and the courses nearly always supplement a class.

 

Ds is a slooooow starter in the morning, so a compromise that we came up with so I don't go insane is to watch a lecture during breakfast.

 

For example, this year we are using the US History course to supplement AP US History.  We'll watch 2-3 per week to keep pace with the reading. When we are caught up to the reading, we switch out to the various science lectures he's watching. It's a method that works well for us. 

 

We also listen in the car when we take our nearly once a month trip up to Seattle to see a play.  It's a long drive and it's one way to pass the time and keep up on school.  We don't listen while ds is driving.

 

 

[FaithManor]

I break down the lectures by topic to go with their textbooks and then assign the lecture plus note-taking when those subjects come up throughout the year. When we first began using Great Courses dh and I sat side by side with the kids and taught them note-taking and outlining from a lecture to make sure they had well organized notebooks they could study from and then formulated tests that included both the text and the lectures so they would be used to this for college, and well just life. What we've emphasized is that it isn't just a college skill, but that many employers send employees to seminars and training days and expect them to not only learn a new skill or memorize new information, but to bring back notes that are valuable later when the information is not fresh or for other employees to consult.

 

To be honest, it has been kind of fun to do it. Some information is old, but somewhat forgotten since we've been out of school so long, some is new, updated, disproved, whatever, so yea we learned something new, some we never knew because it is not a subject we had previously studied, and some was just fun. I mean, I do get a kick out of Professor L when he uses his terrible fake accents and comes costumed to class, "World History: Fertile Crescent to the American Revolution".

 

We've also been known to listen to them in the car, especially for interesting courses that I picked up on clearance but aren't specifically included in a for credit course. it really helps pass the time.