Timelines
Overview
Timelines help students understand the chronology of historic events, and help students situate newly encountered events and figures in relation to those they’ve already studied. They provide a visual aid for identifying cause and effect relationships between events, and a visual prompt to activate student prior knowledge.
Today’s digital timelines do far more than present a static, linear progression of dates and names. Online, interactive timelines support visually rich displays of information—text, images, multimedia, hyperlinks, even geospatial data—using spatial arrangements, categories, and color schemes to convey meaning.
Timelines for Kids is an appropriate introduction or review for elementary students.
Module Suggestion
- Practice using at least 2 of the timeline tools
- Watch the tutorials and explore the website
- Make a quick timeline of your life events
- Publish your timelines
- Determine which timeline tool you will integrate into a lesson
Multimedia Timeline Tools
Time.Graphics is a free timeline creator to easily incorporate text, video, and graphics. Timelines can be downloaded & shared.
History in Motion creates a timeline of events on a map showing time.
Other timeline Tools
Timeline JS: This tool uses Google Sheets to record the dates, details, and images and then imports them into fabulous timelines. This can only be used by teachers as a teaching tool. Students are unable to share Sheets to the public which is required.