Anyone ever use any of "The Great Courses"?

Well, I guess I’m a little odd too.  They look fascinating.  Any opinions on the history courses?

We’ve only done one history course, Darcy Armstrong’s The Medieval World.  We really liked this one.  She’s an interesting lecturer.  She has another one out I want.  Anyway, we did like it.

ONE thing I haven’t mentioned yet.  These courses are originally designed for adult learners.  CHECK THE LECTURE TITLES.  There ARE lectures in various sets that I would not let a child watch.  There is evolution in the science courses, there are various courses that find a wide variety of pretexts to discuss sex.  Check even the literature courses, find out about the literature they use.  You can be pretty sure that a literature lecture aimed at adults focused on a  James Joyce novel is almost certain to stray into territory you don’t want your fifteen-year-old in!  If you are in doubt, ask around or call The Teaching Company, they can help you decide if something might not be appropriate for a younger learner.  They are pretty used to dealing with homeschool families.  If you like the looks of a course but there is a questionable lecture, you can just omit that one if you like.

They typically are pretty easy to predit the sale prices.  36 lecture courses are often discounted to $99, rarely below $70.  The 24 lecture ones are often discounted to $69.  Only on rare special occasions can you get them for less than that.  You might check quickly on Ebay, although many of these hold their value well. 

We do like this one very much.  Instead of a strict “chronological” style presentation, she overviews the era and then focuses on various aspects of life, like religion, castles, cathedrals, family, clothing, food, etc.  She is an interesting lecturer–she is actually an expert on medieval British literature, especially Arthur sagas.  My ds looked up some of her work after watching these.  It filled a good spot for us–that son, when doing Middle Ages, had already read the Guerber book, and most of the other texts I found were either LESS info, or ginormous (like 800 pages!) and he didn’t want that.  So we did some literature and this course and it worked well for us.  I may very well use it again with ds #3.  We just watched one a week and it worked out great.

How ironic that this comes back up….as you may remember, we’re struggling here with chemistry.  I recently checked out The Great Courses Chemistry.  It’s high school level.  I’m planning to start previewing this afternoon.  Has anyone used these for high school chemistry?

Thanks,

Melissa

http://reflectionsfromdrywoodcreek.blogspot.com/