Within a classroom setting, the book can serve as:

 

- a textbook for students

- a source of general information on big history for teachers and others who are teaching any big history course or, in fact, any history course

- background information for guest teachers of a big history course.

 

For using it as a students' textbook, it may be helpful to consult the course models, learning goals and objectives, and examination models pages on this web site, which provide more detailed guidelines for how to use the book as a textbook.

 

 

 

Teachers may want to supplement the overview of big history and general model offered by the textbook with additional information on the history and context of academic discoveries. There are a great many books, articles, and online videos available telling these exciting stories.

 

Excellent written sources on the history of discoveries include:
- Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)
- Marcia Bartusiak: The Day We Found the Universe (2010)
- Walter Alvarez: T. rex and the Crater of Doom (2008)

- Charles Darwin: On the origin of species (great many editions)

 

Classic accounts of scientific adventures include:
- Alexander von Humboldt: Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent (Penguin, abridged, 2006)

- Charles Darwin: The Voyage of the Beagle (Penguin, abridged, 1989)

 

- Cosmic Evolution

- Big History Project

- Crash course big history

- Crash course world history

 

There are a great many more fascinating videos online, and a quick search on video web sites will yield amazing results.