Last month I featured some of my favorite tools for students to make digital portfolios and tools for students to use to create multimedia collages to celebrate the school year. One of the things that I forgot to mention last month was the idea of using multimedia timelines as a means to sharing growth throughout the school year.

The idea of creating a timeline to use as a digital portfolio is to have students show examples of growth throughout the school year. Students can add examples of their work from each month of the year. Here are the three tools that I would use in elementary school, middle school, and high school classrooms.

Elementary School – RWT Timeline Creator
Read Write Think’s Timeline Creator is a good tool for students to use if you just want them to create timelines of things they learned during the school year. I would have them add an entry or two for every month of the school year. The entry doesn’t have to be terribly detailed as I’m just looking at this activity as a reflection and summary activity. RWT’s Timeline Creator does not require students to have an email address or register for an account.

Middle School – Sutori
Sutori is a timeline creation tool that I like because as a teacher you can create an online classroom in which you monitor your students’ work. With a Sutori account you can build timelines in a vertical scroll format. The timeline can have videos, images, audio, and text in each event or date marker. Here’s an example of a Sutori timeline being used as a digital portfolio.

High School – Timeline JS
Timeline JS is a great tool if your school is using G Suite for Education. Timeline JS creates a timeline based on entries made in a Google Spreadsheets template provide by Timeline JS. Your entries can include videos, images, text, and audio recordings. Take a look at this tutorial to learn how to use Timeline JS.