The Noble Experiment - Opinions?

[Tiffini]

Right now I'm looking at Notgrass and The Noble Experiment to supplement our Government study in Rev2Rev for HS credit next year. I would love to hear opinions on The Noble Experiment from those who have actually used it. Thanks!!

[MicheleW]

I have not used Notgrass, although I spent quite a bit of time at last year's convention going back and forth about those two. I ended up going with Noble Experiment. I was thinking that it would be nice to have the videos and hear someone talking about the subjects. I also liked having 5000 Year Leap and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as part of the program.

It ended up that 5000 Year Leap is not scheduled and there are no questions about it. The regular Governement class is set up to be 3 times a week for one semester, and if you choose to do 5000 Year Leap, you just have them read a chapter on the off-days. I thought that the ideas of the class were great. My son and I had a lot of wonderful discussions about the Constitution and other topics. 5000 Year Leap is a great book which I highly recommend.

The downsides were: 1) The teacher on the videos is rather dry. He is very obviously reading word-for-word from cue cards. 2) The quizzes and test often did not match up with the lesson material. Most of the questions were fine, but there were often a couple which didn't seem to have been covered in the material. The kit comes with a teacher resource CD-rom which has the transcript of every video lesson. In the beginning, I was going through and trying to find where he had talked about a certain test answer and even I couldn't find it, so after a couple times where I felt that in fairness, I had to throw out a few test questions which were clearly never covered anywhere, I started making study guides based on the test questions and had DS google any answers he could not recall from the lectures.

I kept all the study guides on my computer, so I can re-use them with the next 3 children. I spent $100 on the kit, and other than the test problem, which I have fixed, I thought it was fine, so I will definitely re-use it. If I had to start over, I may have researched the Notgrass more. But I have never used that one and don't know anyone personally who has, so maybe there are little things in that one too. One thing I liked about the videos was that DS would play them in the living room, so we all got to hear them. This made it easier to discuss, and I didn't have to read his book. I didn't actually sit down and watch the video, but I could hear them as I was doing other things.

In the end, I thought he had a very good understanding of government and the constitution. It also happened to be caucus time while he was in the class, so I had him attend our pricinct caucus with us and write a report on that. We also watched parts of the Republican primary debates.

Good luck in choosing.

[Tiffini]

Michele, thank you so much for this extensive review! It helps me in making a decision. I was able to look at Notgrass extensively at the convention and really liked what I saw. However, I thought maybe the DVDs would be better for teaching. So, now, I have some more to chew on. Thank you!!