Timeline Generators

Students can learn so much through developing a timeline.  There are some great tools out there for creating timelines.  Students can embed pictures, audio and add text.  These websites go from very basic to multimedia presentations.  Each of these sites are free at the time that I posted this.  When you visit each site that may have changed.

Class Uses:

• Students make a timeline of an event in their life as a prewrite to a personal narrative.
• Timeline a fiction book as a form of book report.
• Instead of timeline, create steps of an process.
• Timeline a story map as a pre-write.
• Teachers make timelines as a way to introduce a historical event.

Top Timeline Creators

1. Tiki-Toki - Wow.....this is fantastic, but not much available for a free account.  However, if you create several detailed timelines with your students it would be worth the cost of $100 a year.  If students use this to its full potential then they will have a beautiful presentation.  You can choose an image to be the background of the timeline (e.g. put an image of the March on Washington on a Civil Rights Timeline) Since this timeline is a little more complicated, I suggest introducing it in 3 parts.  To begin with teachers could create a timeline as a way to present information to students.  Then in the next unit a timeline can be created as a class...after each lesson add 1-2 events to the timeline.  Finally, students can create their own timeline.  Students will need to create accounts that allows them to save their work.  This allows allows students to "share" rights so they can collaborate with group members.
2. Xtimeline:  This has been around for a long time and has been one of my favorites.  Students login and save their work.  It my not be as pretty as Tiki-Toki, but is a nice timeline with images.  Students may collaborate and work on the same timeline.  There are also hundreds of timelines to view that were created by others.  This website is sometimes very slow, so check it out before you assign it to your class
3. Dipity -- Dipity has a free version that allows you to create 3 timelines with 150 events.  Students create an account
4. Timeglider:  Free version allows each user to create 3 timelines with 16 images per timeline.  This is a web tool that lets you create, collaborate on, and publish zooming/planning interactive timelines for free.It is like Google Maps but for time.  Students must create a login.  Tutorial
5. Timeline Maker --very basic timeline generator.  Final product is a horizontal timeline with date and short event discriptor.  Great for when you just need something quick.  No login, so work can not be saved.  Students must create and print timeline in one sitting.  **Note:  if students have information written on paper, grades 3-5 can do about 5 events in 30 minutes.
6. Read Write and Think - This timeline generator is nice because it allows you to add by date, time of day, or event.  It is very easy to use starting at grade 3.  You move to a new page each time you put in a new entry, and I could not find a way to go back.  You do not need to login, so project must be finished in one sitting.

5 Tools for Making Timelines from Edudemic