Dipity Timelines

Blogs in Time on Dipity.

Today I'll be discussing timelines as an educational tool; I have explored two types - the traditional hand drawn timeline and the elearning timeline created on Dipity. Dipity allows users to create timelines with added features such as pictures, links and videos. Its educational merit is, in my eyes, quite apparent. Timelines are a staple of my education, I've even seen them used in lectures. They are a simple graphical organiser which displays information and events in relation to each other and time. The advantages of using timelines to display events (as opposed to a page full of text and dates) is their visual appeal and simplicity, they are easy to read and draw information from and visual learners will be more engaged and quite likely find information easier to recall. They can be used in humanities subjects to portray important events in history, in science to display cosmological events and the Earth's development or in biology to show the evolution of humans (or plants and animals) or even in English/literary studies to explore how certain events shaped literature or in units about biographies (important events in a persons life) or mathematics to show important mathematical discoveries or help learners understand the concept of time. Timelines could also be used in sciences to track the growth of something or a chemical reaction.

Unfortunately traditional timelines can be too simplistic for some subject matters and may not allow enough insight into an issue or cultural event that occurred, especially if it occurred during a "busy" section of the timeline. Furthermore they can be messy, hard to read and prone to spelling errors. The picture of my hand drawn timeline above highlights some of the limitations of a hand drawn timeline - errors were irreversible, it was messy, handwriting was not as neat as typed text would have been, important events were skipped because of space limitations and details were left out for the same reason. The timeline doesn't include any pictures because I'm not good at drawing and adding others would have meant finding relevant pictures, printing/cutting them out then gluing them on and that just would have been too much effort.

So what advantages do Dipity timelines offer over the humble handdrawn timeline? Firstly Dipity timelines may appear as simplistic as a traditional timeline but in actual fact they allow for a lot more detail. They have a clean, neat layout and time periods can be zoomed in on or out of. Pictures and videos can be added and links can be embedded. This means that a lot more information can be provided through these timelines. Errors can be rectified in Dipity timelines and further events can added later. Unlike traditional timelines they can be saved and shared, they can be emailed to others and added to later. They can be embedded into websites. Creating them is easy, as is adding additional features such links, descriptions, pictures and videos. I certainly prefer this way of presenting timelines over the traditional method and can see their merit in an educational context.

Pictures and videos require awknowledgement if included in Dipity timelines, unless original/user owned as are those in mine. In a classroom childrens safety can be ensured by gaurding their privace. Future events relating to learners should not be included in case an unwanted stranger takes an interest and decides to attend such an event. Personal details of students should be avoided, as should publishing photographs without permission (maybe only first name and hand drawn portraits should be used to represent them/their achievements).