Which great courses DVDs......

[ProudGrandma]

have you used for US History, World History and Government?  And did your kids like them and find them useful? 

 

thanks.

[jjeepa]

This year we're using the History of the United States 2nd edition and it's been a big hit.  I watch the videos with my ds, who is a senior, and we've both greatly enjoyed the course.  We occasionally use the discussion questions in the guide that is offered with the course, but mostly we just discuss whatever strikes us as interesting.  I would recommend the course.

[Garga]

We've only used them for World History so far:

 

 

A Brief History of the World:  I like this one, but my son does not.  Every single sentence is long and convoluted.  I can follow it fine, but the speaker quickly loses my DS14's interest.  In order for my son to learn from it, I print out the outline of the speech and have my son follow along.  Then I pause the video every few minutes to make sure my student is understanding what was said.  

 

The sentence structure is complex and the vocabulary level is high. The guy is *smart*!   Again: I love these lectures, but I was the sort of kid reading Tolstoy for fun at 14.  My ds14 just isn't that kind of kid.  The complex sentence structures and high vocabulary level sounds like wah-wah-wah to him.  Even though the lectures are packed with good information he finds them boring because he can't track with what the lecturer is saying without all the pausing and reading the outline as we go.  It wears him out.

 

 

 

Turning Points in Modern History:  I have only watched two of these and I like them just fine.  My son watches them alone now because it's not like the above lectures.  He can understand what is going on just fine without me pausing to explain.  He likes these lectures quite a bit.  These have normal sentences and a normal vocabulary.  There's nothing special to say about them...they're solid and engaging for my ds14.  They pick one event per lecture and the speaker explains how it impacted history as a turning point.  (Gutenberg, the Wright brothers etc.)

 

 

 

High School Level World History:  My son really liked these a lot.  My son has a goofy sense of humor and enjoyed the fact that the professor dresses up in time period costumes for each lecture and does dreadful accents.  He learned a lot from these videos as well.  Some people think it's immature for the guy to dress up and they say the lectures are too easy.  Sure...they are, when compared against the college level lectures.  But these are meant to be high school level and there's no shame in a high school student enjoying them and learning from them.  It gave a much needed break to my student in the middle of his school day to listen to these lectures.  These only go through the American Revolution, so that little break is now gone from our day as we're past that and into WWI right now.

 

 

NOTE:  I require my son to answer the questions at the end of each lecture--they're included at the end of the outline of each lecture.  The High School Level World History one comes with an entire book that has about 10 questions per lecture--8 or so quick questions and then 1 or 2 short answer/essay questions.  My son can answer those just fine and also can pretty easily answer the Turning Points in Modern History questions.  Turning Points has about 2 questions to answer--short answer/essay style.

 

He struggles to answer the questions for A Brief History of the World.  About 1 time out of 5 or 6 lectures, the questions are difficult to answer as you really need to have knowledge outside of what has been taught to answer them.  You have to use what you may already know to compare against something that was taught in the lesson.  My son is 14, so he doesn't already know some of the things the questions assume the listener would know.  These lectures are great to me, but to a 14 year old boy they are a bit above his head.

 

ETA:  As always, this is true for my student, who is bright but not at the genius level.  For someone else, everything could be flipped--someone else's kid might hate the high school level ones thinking they're babyish and soak up the Brief History of the World ones, reveling in the high vocabulary.   You've gotta know your own student.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Garga

[Garga]

This year we're using the History of the United States 2nd edition and it's been a big hit.  I watch the videos with my ds, who is a senior, and we've both greatly enjoyed the course.  We occasionally use the discussion questions in the guide that is offered with the course, but mostly we just discuss whatever strikes us as interesting.  I would recommend the course.

 

 

I've already bought that one for next year, so it's nice to hear you say that!

[regentrude]

For US: Turning Points in American History (48 lectures, Prof. Edward O’Donnell)

 

For World: I believe I listed the lectures we used in a reply to one of your other posts? Let me know if I didn't.

Edited March 17, 2017 by regentrude

[happypamama]

For world, or at least the medieval part, Philip Daileader's three series on the Early, High, and Late Middle Ages. DD absolutely loves them!

[MarkT]

anyone use 

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/america-in-the-gilded-age-and-progressive-era.html

?

 

(audio available at our lib)

[ProudGrandma]

thank you so much for these.  Are there any that talk about Government?  We are doing Nortgrass government, but I am not really sure how much my kids are actually learning...so i thought if I could find something (even if it's not Great Courses) that they could watch that might solidify what they read in their book....that would be great.

 

Keep the ideas coming....thanks.