debbie oestreicher's List: Social Studies - Timelines

Time Tube is an awesome website for our You Tube addicted students. It is essentially a cross between a time line and You Tube. Students can type in a historical (or any) event and Time Tube will create a time line of related videos (the time line is based on when the video was added not on historical relevance).
Use Time Tube in your classroom to introduce students to time lines, history subjects, current events, etc. Your students will appreciate the break from the traditional textbook time lines and learn more in the process. Before using Time Tube with your classroom, preview the topic to verify its school appropriateness (actually you should always do that!) This would also be a good place to teach students to question the reliability of the resources they are using and to check their “facts”.

My Timeline is a tool introduced by Maryland’s Thinkport. My Timeline allows students to create professional looking timelines online. Timelines can be saved and printed from the online environment. Teachers can create interactive timelines about any subject that can be filled in by students. My Timeline can be used for any history project or to teach chronological events. My Timeline is a neat tool, it allows students to add dates, events details, and an image uploaded from Thinkport’s image library. Students could also use the timeline tool for book reports, re-telling the story in chronological order. Teachers can create and save timelines that become fill-in-the-blank type activities for students to complete.
Click on the “Sample Student Activities” to see how other classrooms and students are using My Timeline.

Capzles is another interactive timeline maker. With Capzles teachers and students can add photos, videos, audio, and text to their timeline. Themes, colors, backgrounds, and background music can be added to the timeline making it unique and personalized. Capzles also provides options when sharing your Capzle, it can be private with a specific list of who can view the Capzle or made public for the world to see. Capzles is a great way for students to create timelines about any subject. The web 2.0 collaborative aspect of Capzles makes it very appealing to students. Because Capzles has the capability of adding audio, photos, and text, it would be the perfect place to record students reading throughout the year. As you assess student reading through reading records, record the students using a program such as Gabcast, Gcast, Audacity, or Garageband. Take a digital picture of the student reading. Througout the year, you can make a Capzle for each student. This is an excellent motivator for students, especially your struggling readers. Students can see their growth throughout the year in pictures, and hear their reading progress made throughout the year. You can share the Capzle with parents (they will go crazy for this keepsake!) and with the students future teacher. How much would you love getting a timeline of your students from the previous year? You would have a jump start on their struggles and strengths in reading as you quickly flip through their timelines. Cool huh?! Tips: When assigning students to create a timeline, direct them to concentrate on the “meat” of the timeline first. Then they can go back and design their timeline with themes, colors, and backgrounds. If you don’t specify they will spend all of their time tweaking the look and run out of time to add the content

Allow students to create timelines on Our Timelines. The timelines can be a 5 to 140 year span. Students fill in the time period, the event description and the event type. Students can also see a timeline of events that happened on their birthdays. This is a great resource for teaching kids about timelines and visualizing history. Use for history lessons, literature timelines, personal timelines, etc.