The end of the school year is quickly approaching for many of us in the teaching profession. In fact, my last day of school is 27 days from now. Like many other high school classes, my classes will soon begin reviewing for final exams. One of the review activities that I’ve had students do in the past is create multimedia timelines containing key events and concepts from the year. Last year my students used XTimeline to do this, but there are other good options available. Here are five ways students can create multimedia timelines.
I’ve written about XTimeline in the past because I find it to be a great service that is very accessible to high school students. Using XTimeline students can collaborate, just as they would when making a wiki, to build a multimedia timeline. Timelines built using XTimeline can include text, images, and video. XTimeline will accept dates in A.D./B.C. format.
TimeGlider offers some nicer layout features compared to XTimeline, but is not quite as intuitive to use as XTimeline. The layout features that I like about TimeGlider is the ability to stagger or indent events below each other in a sequence. TimeGlider also makes it easy to display the relative importance of an event by increasing its size in comparison to other events on the timeline. Like XTimeline, TimeGlider accepts dates in A.D./B.C. format.
Time Toast is quiet easy to learn to use. To add events to a timeline simply click on the inconspicuous “add an event” button and a simple event box pops up in which you can enter enter text, place a link, or add a picture. Time Toast does not have the more advanced editing options that XTimeline and TimeGlider offer. What it offers instead is ease of use which makes it a suitable choice for students in elementary school or middle school.
Do you have a favorite timeline building tool? If so, please share it in the comments.