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    #200206 09/07/14 05:08 AM
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    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.

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    Looks great - I will to introduce this to my DD when she takes her head out of her Marvel Encylopedia and gets breakfast LOL


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    Thank you for sharing the Big History Project (BHP). After a quick perusal of the BHP website, a few thoughts:

    1) The BHP website "Credits" page lists Further Reading for Chapters 1-5. I find 16 books listed, the majority of these from the past decade. The most recent book listed was published in 2013. The oldest publication date listed is 1988.

    For its public face and presentation page, some may find it odd that a "big picture" summary of so many years of history does not offer an extensive bibliography and chooses to limit recommendations for further reading to:
    - few resources
    - exclusively titles which are recent.

    2) Quote from BHP website: "... the Big History story has developed over time, and will continue to evolve."

    - This notice provides a heads up or fair warning that content may be in a state of flux. When trust is given based on outward appearance while contents may be unknown, this may bring to mind thoughts of blank checks or of the Trojan horse.

    - Once accepted as a mainstream education tool, in what ways might BHP evolve? Will changes to BHP be documented and made known? Or might changes be made without transparency?

    - Will this be a one-size-fits-all nationalized curriculum? What vast stores of knowledge would be left on the shelf if all schools taught the same narrow selection from the many past centuries of accumulated knowledge? A statement on the BHP website, seeking early adopters to "create a movement" suggests that BHP developers "can customize the course, aligning it with PBL, STEM, and other unique environments." Ongoing, will changes be offered as options, respecting local control of schools?

    3) The home page of the BHP website describes the Big History Project as a "Common Core-aligned course". With CCSS currently consisting only of standards for English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics, does this imply an expansion of Common Core? ... the creation of a new, as yet unrevealed, set of nationalized curriculum standards? Additional mention of CCSS is at a high level and does not provide information: "Built to hit Common Core, C3 and state standards — built from the ground up to align with the expectations of the CCSS, starting with the learning outcomes and including the assessment and lesson activities."

    4) In "preparing it for free public access", will BHP online software track and collect data on users?

    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    At least if there is a textbook, parents can skim it to quickly get an idea of what is covered in the course.
    Agreed. A textbook version of all world history may be quite large and therefore less portable (or may be printed as several books as was once common with encyclopedia sets), yet books offer advantages such as:
    - stability of content,
    - transparent publication history (version/edition, copyright date, ISBN, authorship),
    - can fuel the imagination as each word is not accompanied by a visual image,
    - not electricity dependent,
    - no data tracking of readers,
    - access:
    - - any number of persons may use/read/share a book,
    - - a book which one owns may be used/read for an indefinite length of time without additional costs imposed,
    - - a book has no scheduled outage or downtime,
    - - a book has no unplanned outage or downtime,
    - - a reader can access book pages in any order,
    - - - parents can access book pages:
    - - - can thumb through to see what is being taught/learned,
    - - - can flip pages to observe context and tone of the information provided,
    - - - can ascertain gaps/omissions/censorship... what is NOT being taught.


    A highly summarized "big history" may be valuable as a map or travel guide for identifying topics that a person may wish to spend more time learning about, but cannot replace visiting the source materials. To the degree that "the Big History Project emphasizes inquiry, analysis, and argument over content knowledge", some may say students ought to be encouraged to compare/contrast BHP material with source documents in context. This may include learning to read cursive, and understanding Roman Numerals.

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    Thanks for mentioning the credits page.

    I see that David Christian has co-authored

    Big History: Between Nothing and Everything (2013)
    by David Christian, Cynthia Brown, and Craig Benjamin

    which is 352 pages and costs about $70 on Amazon.

    Since

    Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (2011)
    by David Christian

    is 672 pages and costs only about $20, I may get this book instead.

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    Here is another online resource which may be of interest when studying history:

    [i]An Outline of American History[/i], published by United States Information Agency (1994).
    Courtesy of U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Germany (https://usa.usembassy.de/).
    This outline includes a comprehensive Table of Contents, and a Reading List:
    - An Outline of American History, Table of Contents
    - Archived on the WayBack Machine -
    - https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/history/toc.htm
    - Outline of American History, Chapter 14: Brief Reading List in American History, which lists over 100 titles,
    - with publication dates spanning half a century (ranging from 1940s to 1990s).

    PDF version here (http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/media/pdf/books/historytin.pdf), dated 2005.

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    This looks great - thanks for sharing.

    I liked this part of the article too (Bill Gates recalling his schooldays):

    Quote
    Without prompting, he recounted getting a bad grade in an eighth-grade geography course (“They paired me up with a moron, and I realized these people thought I was stupid, and it really pissed me off!”)

    I am sure that plenty of our kids here could relate!


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    Originally Posted by madeinuk
    This looks great - thanks for sharing.

    I liked this part of the article too (Bill Gates recalling his schooldays):

    Quote
    Without prompting, he recounted getting a bad grade in an eighth-grade geography course (“They paired me up with a moron, and I realized these people thought I was stupid, and it really pissed me off!”)

    I am sure that plenty of our kids here could relate!

    This is DD's least favorite part of school - group projects. She is absolutely baffled and irritated by other the other kids who do the work just because they have to! I'm sure they aren't pleased with her either!

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    Oops - forgot to say thanks for letting us know about the class!!

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    These are great resources - thank you! Not an online resource, but my ds7-8 couldn't put down the Joy Hakim series on American History and History of Science.


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