Your favorite Great Courses lectures for World History?

[rbk mama]

What have been your absolute favorites?  I think DS will do World History over two years (10th and 11th grades), and it really needs to be video and lecture, not text, based.

 

We own:

Guns,Germs, and Steel

How the Earth Changed History

Engineering an Empire

 

This is a STEM kid with LD's (2E); overall time spent on this will be low compared to his other subjects. 

 

TIA for your thoughts!

 

ETA:  We're also using the Crash Course videos.

Edited July 3, 2017 by rbk mama

[Alicia64]

Mine are rising 9th graders, but I heard that these were both good:

 

Understanding the inventions that changed the world

Espionage and covert operations : a global history

 

I don't mean to topic-steal, but if you have time to pm me . . . I'd love to hear what worked well in 9th grade. On any subject!!

 

Alley

[Julie Smith]

My kids love Mr. Muumy aka Bob brier.

[happypamama]

Not sure if this counts as world history, but Philip Daileader's three sets of lectures on the Early, Middle, and High Middle Ages are excellent.

[Donna]

We enjoyed The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World. It actually went through Roman and some medieval as well.

[Garga]

DS liked the high school world history series. Yes, it's high school level and he liked it. :). Some of the reviewers didn't like it because the professor dressed up for each lecture and stayed in character as someone from that time period, but that's why my son liked it. :). Some people say that the lectures are at too low of a level, but you have to remember it's a high school level while all the other Great Courses are college level.

 

I liked how it came with a workbook with about 10 questions for each lecture. Note--it didn't cover all of world history. It ends earlly, but I don't remember where now.

 

DS also liked "Turning Points in Modern History. It picks up in the 1500s. It picks a major event in history (like the Gutenburg press) and talks about why it was a big deal.

 

I liked A Brief History of the World quite a bit, but my DS didn't. The sentence structure and vocabulary that the professor uses is at a very high level--very complex sentences. My son is 14 and had trouble following the lectures. In order for him to follow along, we had to print out the lecture notes and follow along carefully or DS would be lost.

[rdj2027]

Ha, I was going to post any course by Bob Brier.  We just finished his "History of Ancient Egypt".  We also like Daileader but I think his lectures are more complex than Briar's courses.  He talks much faster than Prof. Brier and thus covers more material per lecture.   My boys really enjoy him but I think my daughter at this point (rising 9th grader) might be overwhelmed.

[MarkT]

Is he going to write any papers?

 

I can't see giving credit for a HS level History course without some writing.

[rbk mama]

Yes, he will write essays and short-responses to questions related to the content.  The main issue for us is that the content itself is best learned through lectures and videos rather than texts.  When a text is unavoidable, which it often us, we still prefer to use software that reads it aloud if possible.