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Posts Tagged ‘timeline’

  1. just in time

    May 6, 2015 by Robin Englebright

    I’ve seen timeline tools being used to great effect in a number of situations , but unfortunately they are all a bit of a palaver to set up, and in some situations are just too darn interactive.

    We’ve been discussing how best to view assessment timings down here at the city campus, both for students, so they have a clear overview to help them manage their time effectively, and for staff, who are mainly focused on a modular delivery, to help appreciate the bigger picture.

    For simplicity I’ve decided to have a look at what sort of timelines can be created by staff on a mac using standard office software. The output is a visualisation of a table of data, so whilst it would be good if it produced accessible output, it may be better to create an time ordered plain text version of the data to support screen reader use.

    Excel templates

    Microsoft offer some timeline templates which are fairly simple to use, but these are linked to Office365, and do require a Microsoft account for access.

    Office timeline templates

    However there are plenty of other templates available. The one below was from tidy form. It generates the timeline from data in a small table, and includes a label height setting so long tags don’t run together.

    tidyform timeline template

    Powerpoint Templates

    A number of Powerpoint timeline templates utilise “SMART ART”, this one came from fppt.com 
    The output is a little more flexible, but doesn’t build the chart automatically. This sort of chart displays the span of a time period more effectively than the previous example, but they could equally be tweaked to produce similar output.

    powerpoint timeline template

    Keynote templates

    Keynote is pretty fantastic tool for laying out elements in an appealing way. I’ve always found the guides which allow centralised alignment really useful, and of course the export options are pretty comprehensive.

    James Welch offers a keynote template which looks good, and is easy to edit.

    Keynote  timeline template

     

    What becomes apparent in creating these timelines is that having a good set of data upon which to build is invaluable.  Next step is to have a look at whether the information presented this way is any more clear for students.


  2. Teaching Technology Timeline

    June 20, 2014 by Robin Englebright

    At the #Cetis14 conference the final keynote by Audrey Watters @audreywatters looked at the history of learning technology, and how it is shaped by folk to tell their point of view.
    It reminded me of a session I ran at the 2012 Jisc Online Conference called “Looking back to shape the future: The History of learning technology in 100 objects…” which managed to riff on both the popular 80’s film AND a (then) popular BBC series. The setup for the session was that sometimes technology changes the way we can work, and the way we can learn.
    The session aimed to record some of the landmarks in teaching technology by creating a collaborative teaching technology timeline using timeline.js (a fantastic bit of scripting).
    I tweeted a link to the timeline and several folk seemed interested so I thought it might be useful to share the link to the timeline, and the google form, and a recording of the presentation.
    We had a number of submissions and in the conference session we discussed what it was that made the difference.
    You can add to the timeline using this Google form.


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