I came across TimeToast awhile ago and was just reminded of it this morning as a tool for creating interactive digital timelines. There are many digital tools available for timeline creation – I’ve listed several in the ‘how to get started’ section below including a few open educational resources. There are also, many ways to create timelines as ‘no or low tech’ projects in a classroom using sticky notes, cards and string.
For Timetoast, a free account allows photos to be uploaded, annotations and live links. I love the ‘timespan’ option, allowing a span of time to be highlighted and annotated. This adds some depth and interest to the typical timeline.
Public timelines can be viewed and shared ‘as is’; your own Timelines can be saved and made private or public. When public, you can share via Facebook, Twitter or by grabbing embed code. Teachers can easily upload the timeline to the class website or blog for home viewing.
As I messed about with it again, I considered a variety of uses; both personal and professional. As a teaching tool, timelines have so many possibilities. Here are a few that come to mind:
- A classroom calendar embedded on the class blog or website – the initial timeline can house calendared events over the year and can also be added to over time either by student request due to personal milestones (lost tooth chart anyone?!) or as the class wishes to share learning events and activities with the world.
- Social Studies units could be greatly enhanced by students creating their own timelines of historic events, life and times of… or the class can co-create a timeline as they explore a specific person, place or time.
- Tracking growth and change in a Science experiment using both photos and text is a unique way to share.
- A unique way to create an ‘About Me‘ or ‘About my Family‘ or ‘History of my Community‘. A recent teacher candidate created a beaded timeline with her students to help students learn more about the Indigenous presence in her school community!
- Create a digital story – fiction or non-fiction
- A way of sharing Inquiry learning; a timeline might help highlight the ‘process’
Timelines can be valuable in a second language classroom such as French Immersion, Core French, etc; allowing students to creatively engage in language learning.
What uses come to your mind? Comment or Tweet to share!
There are several free timeline programs (and plenty of ways to create timelines using other programs – PPT or Padlet or a mindmap come to mind). Here are a few programs with specific timeline features:
- Open Education Options:
- The Knight Lab project from Northwest University’s includes a timeline maker (and other OER development and storytelling tools including interactive maps & VR)
- Twine can be used to create a timeline. I recently drafted a ‘herstory’ timeline trying to show an alternate viewpoint to the typically male-centric ‘historical’ record.
- Padlet can be used for visual and interactive timelines.
- Time Graphics is another free timeline maker (though not one I’ve tested!)
- Microsoft also has various basic and ‘premium’ timeline templates.
- Adobe Spark has a free timeline maker with templates
Here is a video tutorial for using timetoast:
