Creating interactive timelines
As language teachers, we often use timelines to explain and practise verb tenses. Dipity is a wonderful tool that can make timelines really fascinating and engaging for students.
You can search for interactive timelines on different topics (history, films,science, celebrities, etc.) or even better, you can create your own timeline about your life or an event and add pictures, text and links
Students can create their timelines and share it with each other. These timelines can be used to practise verb tenses while at the same time practising presentation skills. Students can practise all four skills:
- speaking (presenting their timeline)
- listening (to presentation)
- reading (the entries)
- writing (a summary of the events, an essay based on the timeline)
It’s great for content based classes,too. Or why not work together with the history teacher. Students can be asked to collect links/data in English on the topic covered in the history lesson and produce a timeline, which can, then, be used in the English lesson. This way, students will practise their language skills and review the history lesson.
This is collaborative learning at it’s best.
You can embed the timelines on your web site or blog and also create RSS feeds.
If you are lazy to create a timeline manually but you have a blog or use twitter, picasa, etc., you can also simply use the RSS feed to generate a timeline automatically (see my example).
I also like the idea of students using a timeline tool to create a record or memory of the course. They could work solo, or in pairs or groups. If they had been creating media along the way it would be an interesting way of documenting their journey through the course.
If creating media had been a part of it, this could even be expanded to a longer project. The timeline could then be used to write a report at the end of the project and to have an interactive record of it. This could be posted on the class or school blog for others to comment on.
Thanks for the idea, Michael!