Education Series (4/7): Big History Project

This blogpost, is written for spreading awareness of free educational resources, which facilitates conceptual & experiential learning.

Can a Historian & a Technology Wizard collaborate on a project?

Generally, history & technology sounds like North pole & South pole, as history mirrors the past, while technology mirrors the future.

However when the technocrat is Bill Gates & the historian is David Christian, path breaking exceptions are bound to happen! Their collaboration has resulted into BIG HISTORY PROJECT.

Watch David Christian & Bill Gates, talk about Big History Project in a 2 minutes video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSG5Ao9rS4I

Big History is an unified, inter-disciplinary approach of studying the history of Cosmos, Earth, Life & Humanity. BIG HISTORY PROJECT has been conceptualized to teach Big History (not for profit - free of cost) to middle & high school students across the globe.   

Big History syllabus covers the length & breath of almost everything, under the sun....ah! I mean, under the universe.

Big History syllabus

The Big History was introduced to the world community by David Christian at TED Conference - March, 2011. (Big Bang to Internet age, in a riveting 18 minutes talk) https://www.ted.com/talks/david_christian_big_history 

Big History Project can be accessed at:

https://www.bighistoryproject.com/home 
Teachers/Schools can register themselves & share the classroom code with the students, for accessing the course. 
If one does not have the classroom code, they can access the 'Lifelong Learners' module (shorter version).

https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/big-history-project
Big History Project is also available on KhanAcademy.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/big-history
Big History (taught by David Christian & David Baker, Macquarie University).
Available in both offerings: free version (no certificate) & charged (with certificate).

Benefits of Big History Project:

• Thinking across scale
• Integrating multiple disciplines
• Offers different perspectives
• Offers holistic understanding
• Inspires love for learning

Requesting you, to spread the word around by sharing this blogpost. Through your thoughtful gesture of spreading awareness on Big History Project, many students would benefit from this free of cost, global classroom offering. Thank You!

Education Series (3/7): ChronoZoom - Big History made Visual

This blogpost, is written for spreading awareness of free educational resources, which facilitates conceptual & experiential learning.

Memories - Collage & Timelines....

One of the feature of Facebook, Google Photos, I like the most is auto-generated collage & timeline of our photos (good old memories & time gone by). Watching the timeline unfolding in front of our eyes, is like walking down the memory lanes & reliving those beautiful moments all over again.

This feel good factor, underlines the basis of human perception & information processing. We perceive & process far better, when information is presented in the form of visuals/images, rather than text/data.

Just imagine, how enriching a student's experience would be if they could visually perceive Big History Timeline, rather than reading it as text & dates!

Big History is a unified, multi-disciplinary approach of trying to understand the History of Cosmos, Earth, Life & Humanity. The timescale of Big History is an unfathomable 14 billion years (Big Bang to today's modern times). It's next to impossible, to gain a holistic understanding, unless a student is able to perceive the big history timescale, in the form of interactive visuals/images.

ChronoZoom

Is it possible to view big history in an interactive visual form?

Yes!

How?

By using ChronoZoom!

What is ChronoZoom?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jvJD8Qv5ec

ChronoZoom is a zoomable timeline of Big History. With ChronoZoom, a student can browse knowledge & interact with the time scale (zoom in zoom out). It makes the relation between time & events clear, vivid & easy to comprehend.

Is ChronoZoom, free?

Yes!

Where can I access ChronoZoom?

http://www.chronozoom.com/#/t00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

What are the benefits of ChronoZoom?

• Helps in visualising big history
• Interactive timescale (zoom in, zoom out)
• This technology, makes comprehension of 14 billion years possible
• Facilitates conceptual & experiential learning
• Makes learning fun

Requesting you, to spread the word around by sharing this blogpost. Through your thoughtful gesture of spreading awareness on ChronoZoom, many students would benefit in their conceptual & experiential learning. Thank You!