Timelines, a nice way to tell a story and collaborate

I have always been fascinated by timelines and now there are several very nice timeline making tools on the web. The one I have used a bit is X timeline which allows the user to create and edit a timeline and produce immediately a nice horizontal scrolling timeline of events against time. Each item can be clicked to reveal detailed text and images. X timeline can be edited by a group of people which is what makes it a Web 2.0 tool, and where they get interesting. This video shows what two examples look like. 

The first question that always needs to be asked of any of these publish tools is, "Can I do this just as well on paper." Well, to make a timeline, yes. A ruler a bit of a sense of scale and it is fairly easy to make a timeline - if you don't want to edit it. That's the big problem with paper products. Once done, they are done. The online version can be started small with just a few items, then it can be added to and added to. The student get the immediate satisfaction from having an attractive looking product, and is encouraged by easy editing to keep working on it and adding more events and more details for each. Being able to add images and other media makes the potential much more grand. But the really nice feature of all these Web 2.0 tools is that they can be used collaboratively. A timeline lends itself to collaboration very well because a large group of people can work on separate events in a detailed timeline.

Then comes the really interesting feature, that other people can be invited to comment on and edit the timeline. This public aspect to publishing means that students can be motivated to produce a really good product because if well done, a timeline will gain a significant audience and will gain comments. Some of them might be critical, suggesting improvements. As shown in the image, X timeline offers a set of options for each timeline - public or private, comments or not etc. This gives the teacher good control, and hopefully the confidence to go for the open choices. That's when the learning can creep out of the classroom. On the other hand, making a timeline of one's life story could be interesting [private] especially if it ventures into the future [public?].

Of course history is not fixed or certain, and there is potential for different versions of events, or entries that are debated between contributors, or competing timeline.

Another similar tool is dipity which looks similar to X timeline but has images appearing in the timeline and a greater potential to embed video and other media.

 

Tags: timelines showme history digital storytelling
Posted at 11:50AM Jul 10, 2008 by John Travers  |