http://xtimeline.com

The basics

Xtimeline allows users to create timelines of events with considerable flexibility within a constrained information format, with several associated collaboration features, and several public communication options. As its creators say: “When we developed the timeline tool, our friends thought of many ways to creatively use the timeline. Some of them thought the timeline could become a great public service, a resource for history education and for debate over current issues. Others wanted to create biographical timelines for celebrities and their scandalous relationships. The ability of these timelines to entertain and educate convinced us that other people would enjoy our timeline as much we do. And that’s how xtimeline came to have a home of its own.”

Slides

Presenting the key affordances and possible uses of Xtimeline:

Video

Discussion and live demonstration of slides:

What is great

Xtimeline utilises a given structure of knowledge (the timeline) within which there are numerous discrete elements. In this way, a large project (creating the timeline) can naturally be broken into smaller, manageable components, to be assigned to individuals or groups within the whole student cohort. Xtimeline has many features which make it deeply educational in orientation – for example, the field ‘source’ which prompts students to provide a reference for the information they have placed into the timeline. Like many Web 2.0 applications, xtimeline requires students to have a discrete identity and account to use the system: this identity/account serves as an organising node for their own interactions with the service, but also means they can easily extract their own particular contributions or, at least, enable teachers to see what each student is doing.

There are many social media curation services online – but few have the particularly useful temporal structure of a timeline. While we might normally associate timelines with ‘history’, then can in fact be used in many different ways, as the examples below demonstrate. Digital tools have more flexibility than traditional pen and paper tools.

Scenarios for using this tool

History for non-history students

A large class (over 200) of first-year students studying mass communication in an on-campus situation; students are arranged in a normal lecture / tutorial attendance pattern with around 20 students per tutorial. Part of the learning outcomes for the unit is for students to have a clear knowledge of the historical development of the communications technologies through which mass communication has occurred – newspapers, radio, television and so on. As well as writing an individual essay on other aspects of mass communication, a major assignment for students will be the creation, via xtimeline, of a timeline for the technologies. Each tutorial group is required to complete this same exercise, working collaboratively, over a two-three week period. Each timeline will remain private until the exercise is complete. The assignment will be graded in two ways – first on the overall quality of the timeline; second on the quality of individual contributions. Since this exercise is for new students at university, with an emphasis on creativity and exploration, there are no detailed requirements for each timeline entry, but students are told the criteria for assessment will be the clarity of the explanation and description of the event, the clear use of sources of information, and the degree to which it engages the reader. The assignment is integrated into class activities by, first, having a tutorial at which the idea of timeliness and how they can be used to understand a subject is explained and discussed (probably after a lecture on technologies of communication), and then after the task is complete, by discussing what students learned from doing it. At this latter tutorial, students will also compare and contrast the timelines each group created which by that stage will be public.

xtimeline:

• is not just for online learners – it provides a digital creativity exercise out of class, for discussion in class;
• allows granular knowledge work – one task, for all students, but each can easily do a small part of the overall task; and
• identifies what each individual does.

Personal timelines for reflective practice

The context for this example is a small class (around 15) of fourth-year education students who are undertaking a semester-long practicum placement in schools. The students will not meet regularly on campus. Each student is required to create a private timeline of their experiences while on prac; they are instructed that each week should contain at least 2 entries to the timeline; each entry should take the form of a key discovery they make about the practical business of teaching. In this example, students are provided with detailed instructions about the content of the timeline entry: not only must they report their discovery, but they need to relate it to some of the theories and practices of education which they have learned about in their course as a whole. They also are required to add (on an ongoing basis) links for the timeline as a whole to relevant materials they find online to explain or help them understand their experience. Each student’s timeline remains private by default; however, since students are being encouraged to form a community of practice, other students can be invited to view and discuss the timelines of others; privacy controls enable individuals to invite only the people they want to view and comment on the timeline. One of the key goals of is to use this particular form of knowledge production to create a focus for discussion and community interaction for students who otherwise would not meet very much during semester. Finally, the timeline is used by students as the basis for the preparation and submission of a reflective assignment at the end of practicum. The printed timeline is included in the assignment and reference is made by the student to the difference between what they though at the time of making entries and now, on reflection, what they mean at the end of the experience.

xtimeline:

• can be used for purely private purposes;
• has very fine controls over the dates and times used – daily to millenia; and
• can be exported and/or printed.

Timeline as the fundamental structure for instruction

A class of 60 students are engaged in the study of genetics; the unit includes both a conceptual / analytical component and also practical scientific techniques, learned in labs. The unit has no lectures: rather, xtimeline is used as the focus for developing, collaboratively, the knowledge. The timeline is a collective enterprise for all 60 students, running the length of the semester. The unit controller, prior to semester, sets up the timeline in the way she wants (using the spreadsheet upload feature), with many key dates (which the teacher already knows to be significant dates in the history of the development of idea about genetics). Using the email invitation feature of the system, she invites all the students to join xtimeline as editors of this timeline. Students are required to research and write up each of the dates in question; as an entry is completed other students can comment on it and suggest changes (students are told not to edit each other’s entries). Part of the challenge here for students will be find out why a date (and just a date) is included. The final examination for this unit contains many short answer questions on the material which has been collectively developed by the students; however, each student is also graded on their entries to the timeline and general participation.

xtimeline:

• serves to structure the knowledge work, but in a specific way which guides what students do (no blank space problem); and
• allows conversations can develop between the people using or viewing the timeline.

Alternatives

Several other online timeline generators are available though they lack some of the features which makes xtimeline so good for collaborative work; some of these do, however, feature more elegant final results using newer technologies for display. You might like to use either Preceden or Timetoast or Timeglider

Further discussion and concepts

Grabinger, S. et al. 1997. Rich environments for active learning in action: Problem‐based learning. Association for Learning Technology Journal, 5.2: 5-17.

Dack, G.H. & Ford, M.J. 2003. Living History in Our Backyard: Technology and Place-Based Learning in Pre-service Teacher Education. In C. Crawford et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2003. pp. 3116-3122). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.