A timeline visualization

I love it when I just happen to stumble into things.

As mentioned yesterday, the War of 1812 is big around here. So, I was watching television and just wading my way through resources and stumbled upon some created in a web application written specifically for education – HSTRY. It’s purpose is to allow teachers and students to create interactive timelines.

It’s free and events (text, images, video, quizzes…) are added with a click as you go through and build your timeline.

Once complete, you just share the link.

In the theme of the War of 1812, there were a few already created.

• War of 1812
• War of 1812
• War of 1812

Nicely done resources and it’s great that they’re shared for the world.  Poking a little more, I found:

• Presidential Roadmap
• Understanding Islam – The Basics

Now, there are lots of ways to build presentations of this sort – LibreOffice, Google Slides, Microsoft Powerpoint, Sway, …

They all present nicely.

Increasingly, conference organizers are asking presenters to share their presentation resources for repurposing after an event.  I’ve always found that there’s a huge difference in a presentation done live versus clicking through the presentation after the fact.

In particular, going to a specific slide in a presentation can be a task.  Just thinking out loud here, wouldn’t it be nice to have a presentation done in HSTRY?  The entire presentation timeline is right in front of you.  So, skipping back and forth if you’re a non-linear learner or just want to review something already covered would be a snap.

Whether you use it or not, this is an application worthy of consideration in the classroom when students are generating a timeline or teachers are presenting a timeline showing a sequence of events.  It’s so visually appealing and easy to navigate.

I don’t think you can go far wrong with it.