Making timelines can be a useful learning activity for all students, including English Language Learners. I actually think students working in small groups to create a big timeline poster is a better overall learning experience. However, I can see the development of online timelines could be a good project in some situations — for example, in sharing information with others around the world in our International Sisters Classes Project.

There are many online timeline tools out there. But I’ve only found a few that are easily accessible to English Language Learners and non-tech-savvy students and teachers, free, and allow users to grab images off the web to add to their final product.

All three seem very similar. At least, I haven’t found much difference between them, but perhaps I’m missing something.

My picks for The Best Tools For Making Online Timelines are:

Xtimeline

Dipity

Russell Stannard, the man behind Teacher Training Videos, has come-out with a  screencast on using XTimeline.

I wrote about Capzles about a year ago, and said it looked like a neat tool to make timelines, but since they didn’t allow you to grab images off the Web I didn’t think it was particularly useful for my students.  I just went back to visit the Capzles site, and was pleased to find that they had added that ability — along with other features.  Because of these changes, I’ve added Capzles to this list.

LIFE has just unveiled a neat new feature that lets you search for any photos in its archives and create an online timeline/slideshow that you can share with a unique url address. Their Photo Timeline lets you use their original captions or you can edit them and create your own, as well as writing your own description for your whole creation. After you log-in (you can do so using your Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, or Google accounts — it would be nice if they allowed on site registration, but I guess you can’t have everything!), it’s just a matter of searching and dragging the photos to your timeline/slideshow.

Timeglider lets you make online timelines. It looks pretty good, but you can only make five timelines on a free account.

When In Time is a new timeline creator that looks very easy to use.

You can find links to these three applications, as well as to the other timeline tools that didn’t make this list, on my website under Student Timelines.

If you found this list helpful, you might want to see the other over-ninety ones, too.

You might also want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.