Timelines in class - Tips and tools

Timeline from blog de 6ºB del CEIP El Puche

What is a timeline?

A timeline is basically a graph used to represent historical periods and happenings. It consists of four parts: the axis (usually the axis is a line or a rectangular bar) on which data are placed, the years that indicate the scale, the historical periods and the events pointed out with lines.

Timelines have been used in class for a long time, but the opportunity to include multimedia elements in a timeline have turned them trendy once again thanks to web tools to design them.

Timelines can be used to represent biographies, to investigate on the evolution of an invention, of a social or musical movement; to create a series of events in chronologial order, such as discoveries, class and learning diaries, or to create a news album, a collection of pictorial events in chronological order, summaries, and so forth.

Timelines in class. What for?

• Primary Education: working with autobiographies, family, family trees, the history and evolution of the school, of the hometown; to narrate the events of a school trip or a school celebration, or an exchange, and so on.
• Technology: showing the evolution of computers, mobile devices, video games, software, hardware, electrical appliances and so on.
• Music: learning about a musician's biography, investigating about the history of instruments, knowing about the evolution of a musical movement, etc.
• Languages: learning more about an author, narrating the plot of a novel, the stages of the evolution of a language, different accents, slangs, and so forth.
• Science: put the phases of an investigation in chronological order, exploring Nobel Prizes and those scientists awarded with the prize and their biographies or theories, discoveries; the impact of those breakthroughs in society according to dates, etc.
• Maths: investigating about the timing of the history of maths, placing problems around a time axis, ordering the stages overcome to solve a problem, and so forth.
• Social Science: working with the chronological order of any process or content that matches the subject goals.

Example of a timeline for Children's Literature

Online Tools to create Timelines

• Dipity: timelines designed with this online tool are very attractive and it allows inserting texts, images, video clips, links for further information, audio tracks, Google maps, as well as social networks feeds, such as Twitter feeds, for instance.
• Timetoast: every timeline created with this online tool can be embedded and linked in our own digital sites, blogs, webs, etc.
• Timerime: it has a version in Spanish too. The outcomes can be embedded and linked in our own digital sites, blogs or webs, but they can also be printed if needed.
• Rememble: it is a very useful online tool for timelined storytelling.
• Tripline: it is a very interesting online too for creating timelines about trips, which join locations, or as a route planner. The outcomes are really engaging from a visual point of view.

Webgraphy (in Spanish)

Herramientas web para la presentación de contenido I - CRFP CLM

http://www.educacontic.es/blog/lineas-del-tiempo-si-pero-cual-elegir
http://www.educacontic.es/blog/lineas-del-tiempo-interactivas-en-el-aula-con-dipity
http://www.educacontic.es/blog/lineas-de-tiempo-con-dipity