Seeing the article

So Bill Gates Has This Idea for a History Class
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
New York Times
September 5, 2014

Quote
In 2011, the Big History Project debuted in five high schools, but in the three years since, Gates and Christian — along with a team of educational consultants, executives and teachers, mostly based in Seattle — have quietly accelerated its growth. This fall, the project will be offered free to more than 15,000 students in some 1,200 schools, from the Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies in New York to Greenhills School in Ann Arbor, Mich., to Gates’s alma mater, Lakeside Upper School in Seattle. And if all goes well, the Big History Project will be introduced in hundreds of more classrooms by next year and hundreds, if not thousands, more the year after that, scaling along toward the vision Gates first experienced on that treadmill. Last month, the University of California system announced that a version of the Big History Project course could be counted in place of a more traditional World History class, paving the way for the state’s 1,300 high schools to offer it.
on the Big History Project I recommended it to my 11yo son, who is in 7th grade. He has been watching some of the videos and likes it. I do wonder if a video-based course is better than one based on a textbook and written primary sources. At least if there is a textbook, parents can skim it to quickly get an idea of what is covered in the course.