Timelines are a great way to visualize information in all subject areas. My task this month, to find a timeline tool to share, wasn’t as smooth as I had hoped. You see, we only want to feature FREE tools for you to use. I scoured our collection of timeline tools, take a look, and I found a wonderful tool to share. This month we are featuring Timeline Maker.
Timeline Maker (reviewed here) allows you to easily make a timeline that you can print or save. As I tested out this site, I learned that if I want to save my timeline, I must register at the site. I was registered and ready to go in less than 30 seconds. You simply create a username, password, and provide your email. EASY! However, what was even more exciting, was the plethora of other goodies that I found once registered. Test Prep, Spelling, Reports, Vocabulary, Math, and more! Once you register, be sure to take a look around.
Now it was time to start my timeline. I clicked Start from the main page. Then I had to come up with a title for my timeline. I could also change my font and decide how many events I wanted to include (6 is the default). You can have 1-12 events on your timeline. You can change your type of font and also the size of the font for both titles or events. Finally, you add the event dates and descriptions. You are done! As a member, you have the options to print or save. Should you choose not to join (or have students create timelines without creating accounts), you can still create timelines and print – but not save.
I love the simplicity of this tool. It is easy enough for a young student to follow. However, it isn’t juvenile looking, so a high schooler could also find a use for this tool. You may wonder why you would use a timeline in your class. A timeline maker is a great back to school activity to get students talking about the highlights of their summer. You could also use it at the beginning of the year to talk about special events, concerts, field trips, and more that will happen during the new school year. When thinking about implementing timelines in the content areas, you could trace the events of a war or other time in history. You could create a timeline of a person’s life (famous musician, artist, president, mathematician, scientist, etc.). Create timelines about what happened in a story or a specific character’s events within the story. As you can see, timelines are a great way for students to demonstrate what they know and to share information.
Thank you for this review. It is very helpful! I have also been looking for a tool that my students can use to create their own timelines as it is such an important aspect of my social studies curriculum. Timelines help students understand chronology but also the relationship between events. If students are creating timelines of different events in different regions of the world, they can also compare them to one another and draw their own conclusions about historical processes. I wonder if the timelines can be copied and pasted somehow if they cannot be saved on the site.