technology timeline assignment

Center for Teaching

Digital timelines.

Why Use a Timelines-Based Assignment?

Timeline-based assignments can aid in a variety of learning goals, including:

Analyze non-linear relationships. Students often view history as distinctly linear: Event A happened, then Event B, then Event C. A linear view can make it challenging for students to identify relationships among events. By using spatial arrangements, categories, and color schemes to convey meaning, timelines can help students identify these complex relationships.
Develop historical context. Students sometimes have trouble seeing a particular text or invention or event in its historical context. By visually co-locating events that occurred concurrently in time, timelines can help students contextualize individual events, people, and inventions in relationship with others.
Analyze on a micro-, macro-, or mega- scale. Students sometimes view historical events on only one scale. In using a timeline, students can identify and analyze how seemingly isolated events relate to larger scale history or other micro-macro dynamics, such as local or regional histories in the context of broader national or worldwide events.
Focus on details. Large trends have little details that need to be examined. Use timelines to help your students discover how little details relate to the larger picture.
Develop arguments. Have students select several items from their timeline to develop an argument about change and/or continuity over time.
Compare time periods. Have students examine themes and concepts across two different time periods. An example used in a Religions of Japan course can be found below in the “Timeline as Analysis” section.
Document work through proper citations. Timelines are not just a product in themselves; they can also be a tool to help students learn essential research skills like citations of source material for individual entries.
Understand the development of scholarly discourse or historiography. Undergraduates can be unfamiliar with the idea of academic disciplines as culturally constructed and interpretive. By allowing students to use a timeline to plot the development of scholarly discourse, they can discover how scholars’ understandings of a key figure or subject changes over time.
Create a visual literature review. Much like understanding the development of scholarly discourse, timelines can also allow students to create a visual literature review, with an emphasis on development over time.
Visualize change (and continuity) over time and space. Timelines might consider spatial arrangements, as well as temporal ones. A number of tools support mapping both time and space on a common visualization, including TimeMapper , Mapbox , Neatline , StoryMap JS , and American Panorama .

As of this writing (June 2016), there hasn’t been any significant scholarship on teaching with online, interactive timelines — yet. We encourage you to explore ways to not only use timelines in your classroom but write about it too!

Types and Examples of Timeline Assignments

Timelines can serve many different purposes in a class, and may even take on multiple purposes. Here are some examples of timeline assignments:

Timeline as Archive

Ask students to research, select, and annotate timeline entries for the curation of a digital timeline of events and artifacts. This kind of archival work requires a number of valuable skills—finding and evaluating sources, curating for relevance and interest, tagging by category or theme, citing and linking appropriately.

Cryptography: Timelines in a Math Course

Type: Collaborative class timeline using TimelineJS (2015 version) and the SIMILE project’s Exhibit and Timeline scripts (2010 version) (all students contributed to the same timeline)

Course: Cryptography first year seminar, which focuses on both the mathematics and history of cryptography

2010 Assignment: Students contributed entries to a Google spreadsheet, which dynamically populated a timeline . Bruff considers the experiment a “moderate success” — he ended up with 121 entries in 7 different categories (such as ciphers, culture, people, unsolved, etc.), and some of his students reported the timeline as helpful in seeing connections among course material. He explains more about the project on his blog .

2015 Assignment: Bruff wanted his students to analyze the timeline more this semester. To do that, he asked his students to do two things: 1) select contributions from the 2010 timeline and improve them by verifying the description, including a credible source with citation and, where available, a link, and making sure there’s an associated image or other type of media with citation; and 2) add new contributions. At the end of the semester, students wrote papers that identified “lessons learned” from the history of cryptography for those interested in keeping secrets. The final student papers were strong, and students reported finding it useful to see new examples they had not discussed in class.

Interesting notes: Bruff credits the following people for his interest in digital timelines: “I first heard about digital timeline tools from Jason B. Jones , who had his students build a Victorian Age timeline back in 2008 using Google spreadsheets and the Timeline script from MIT’s SIMILE project . Jason worked with Brian Croxall on the project, and Brian put together a helpful tutorial for others interested in building collaborative timelines.”

Modern South Asia: A Timeline to Accompany HIST 1160

Dr. Samira Sheikh, Associate Professor of History and Associate Professor of Asian Studies Program, created a collaborative timeline with her students in a course on modern South Asia using Tiki-Toki .

Travel Log: Voyages of the British ship the Clarence (1858-1873)

Ian Petrie, Associate Director of University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Teaching and Learning, plotted the voyages of the British ship the Clarence (1858-73) with his Voyages of Discovery first year seminar. Petrie’s students use multiple tools to chart the voyage including StoryMapJS and a torque map made using CartoDB.

Timeline for Analysis

Timeline for analysis.

Students can use timelines to conduct various types of analysis. This type of timeline requires that a timeline have a sufficient number of entries, either created by current or past students.

Ask students to identify patterns and themes among entries in a timeline.
Ask students to make comparison across different time periods in order to identify aspect of continuity and change.
Ask students to contextualize an entry by relating it to concurrent entries in order to develop historical perspective taking, understand ethical dimensions of history, and/or analyze causes and consequences. For example, you may ask students to consider a particular text written at a particular time. What political, religious, and artistic debates of that time might have influenced the writing of the text?
Ask students to evaluate the effectiveness of a law or policy by plotting the chronology of its development and subsequent trials and/or controversies

Love and Marriage Timeline in a Women and Gender Studies First Year Seminar

Example of a digital timeline used by Dr. Elizabeth Meadows

Link: http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/227613/Love-and-Marriage/
Type: Collaborative class timeline using Tiki-Toki (all students contributed to the same timeline)
Project: The class created a history of marriage in Great Britain and the US from 1500 to 2014.
Meadows wanted to trace “the shifting meanings and cultural functions of love and marriage through an archive of legal, religious, and cultural texts.” During the course of the semester, they added texts that served as commentaries on marriage. As a final project, they wrote individual papers connecting recent judicial rulings on same-sex marriage to entries on the shared timeline.
Grading: Students were graded on selected timeline entries, and they wrote a final paper that used elements of the timeline as evidence. The final project, which required the students to concur or dissent from recent judicial rulings on same-sex marriage using elements from the timeline, was graded based on the quality of the student’s analysis.
Privacy: Meadows chose to have the timeline be publicly available to help develop her students’ sense of ownership of the project. She allowed the students the option to post under their name or under a pseudonym for privacy purposes.
Interesting notes: Meadows found the final papers “enjoyable to read” and the students were proud of what they produced. From an instructor’s point of view, the Tiki-Toki platform was simple for her and the students to use and allowed for immediate course corrections when things went awry (such as when students needed to be reminded to use the publication date of a piece, not the date the anthology was published).

Religions of Japan Timeline: Thinking Thematically, Thinking Historically

Course: Religions of Japan (approximately 30 students)
Type: Individual student timelines using Tiki-Tiki (each student created their own timeline)
Examples: Example 1 , Example 2 , Example 3 , Example 4
Project: Lowe’s course was a thematically-oriented course covering approximately 2,000 years. One of his main methodological goals was for students to recognize that religious traditions do not exist in a vacuum and instead must be studied within their context. This project asked students to make a multimedia (image and text) timeline on Tiki-Toki of four entries per week based on readings and lectures over the course of the semester. The students wrote papers based on their timelines, gave presentations, and used them as a study guide.
Students will be able to uncover patterns obscured by standard narratives in the historiography.
Students will be able to relate materials across weeks in the course by thinking about them synchronically (alongside other events from the same time period) and diachronically (within historical trajectories).
Students will develop a note-taking system for organizing the materials studied in the course. The timeline will act as a resource for study and help students synthesize information.
Students will practice writing regularly with low stakes writing assignments.
Timeline – 25 points total (15 points x 1 point per week and 10 points on overall quality of timeline): Students were required to write four timeline entries per week for weeks two through fourteen. On week 15, students were expected to edit and polish timeline entries for grading. Simply completing these activities will give you full credit for 15 points. Quality points were assigned based on the following criteria: number of entries (at least 60 total for full credit), accuracy, depth (minimum of three substantial sentences), use of media (when appropriate), quality of writing, and citations.
In-Class Presentation – 5 points total: Starting in week three, students delivered short presentations (3-5 minutes) where they summarized some of their new entries for that week, explained any patterns that they saw, and posed a discussion question.
Analytical Paper – 20 points total: Lowe gave students the option to answer one of four prompts. Students were required to use at least one primary and one secondary source and engage materials from multiple weeks of the syllabus. Additionally, they were required to include a one-paragraph post-script (not counted in the 4-5 page total) that explains how the timeline helped with the assignment.
Role of instructor and teaching assistant: Lowe designed the project and periodically checked the timelines to get a general sense of students’ posts. The TA provided the students with written feedback twice a semester and gave final grades on the timelines. Lowe graded the final papers that came out of the timeline. Lowe and his TA divided grading and feedback responsibilities for the in-class presentations.
Interesting notes: Lowe plans to revise the presentation component of his assignment because the presentations at the beginning of the semester had too few entries to be productive. He reflected, “I plan to revise this part of the assignment to have two whole class periods dedicated to student presentations at 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the class. I will ask students to use their presentations to tell a story with a narrative based on their timeline. Many of the presentations devolved into simply sharing a few entries with no effort to connect them into a coherent story.”

Timeline as Argument

The selection and presentation of entries in a timeline can be used to support an argument. This type of assignment is best suited for individual or group projects where students add a series of entries to a timeline to support the argument they want to make — usually to a instructor-supplied prompt.

Screenshot of timeline created for Molvig's Scientific Revolution course

Links: Example 1 , Example 2 , Example 3
Course: Scientific Revolutions
Type: Individual student timelines using Tiki-Toki
Project: HIST 1510 The Scientific Revolution is a course where lecture material is presented thematically, rather than chronologically. This timeline assignment was an opportunity for students to re-organize the course material chronologically. Students were asked to evaluate the concept of “the scientific revolution” through this timeline, and alongside a short written explanation, they were asked to make an argument . The display of names, events, and dates is not an objective representation, but rather an argument weighing relative importance. The p roject was the combination of a timeline and an accompanying essay.
Grading: Students were graded on a final paper that used elements of the timeline as evidence for their argument.
Privacy: Dr. Molvig allowed the students to choose how to self-identify online; some students chose to use a pseudonym for privacy purposes.

Timeline for Student-Created Content

Timeline for student-created content.

While the other examples listed here ask students to use external and existing sources, timeline tools can also accommodate student-created content. With this type of timeline, you can ask students to use a timeline to plan a trip to Mars, hypothesize about the coming Singularity, create a travel-log, or map out an autobiography. Spatial elements may be a critical component to some of these timelines.

Timeline as Travel Itinerary

For example, i n a foreign language classroom, have students develop timelines to plan an itinerary for visiting a new place that they can describe in the target language. During an in-class presentation, the student can describe places to visit using the target language. This type of project can be connected to other work students do in the course, such as verb tenses, target vocabulary, and presentation skills. For instance, in a section on using future tenses, students can describe they places they will visit during an upcoming trip. Additionally, you can also have students create contingency plans (in case of rain or other delays), which would require students to use conditional or subjunctive tenses as well as weather-related vocabulary.

See http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/drpicardhis/nashville-travel-itinerary for an example of a timeline of places to visit in Nashville near Vanderbilt created by Danielle Picard, Senior Graduate Teaching Fellow and PhD Candidate in History.

There are a few strategies you can use to make grading timeline assignments easier:

Light grading vs. evaluative grading. You might grade timeline entries submitted by students only lightly, checking that certain components (title, description, image, citation, and so on) are included. Or you might assess the quality of timeline entries more rigorously, perhaps using an analytic rubric to differentiate among poor, acceptable, good, and excellent quality work in each component.
Grading all entries vs. grading a selection. You might not grade all entries a student submits to a timeline. You could ask the student to select a set of 3-5 representative entries, or you could select 3-5 entries to grade at random.
Grading the timeline vs. grading work based on the timeline. If you ask students to create a final paper or project based on their timelines, you might grade that final project instead of grading the timeline directly. If you do, it can be helpful to ask students to include a note with their final project explaining how they used the timeline. These notes can help you understand decisions students made not evidence in their final projects.

Regardless of the strategy you choose, you’ll also want to:

Discuss timeline entries with your students and establish criteria for what makes for a “good” entry. Consider developing a few “model” entries for your students and/or highlighting particularly good entries during class.
Provide feedback to students about their timelines or entries early in the course. This feedback can take the form of actual grades or could be comments. Some timelines (like Tiki-Toki) allow you and other students to leave positive/negative comments on entries that indicate questions or concerns you may have.

Should students work collaboratively on a single class timeline or on individual timelines?

Working collaboratively or independently on a timeline depends on your goals for the assignment. For instance, you may want your students to learn from their peers and construct a timeline that everyone can use (like the example of Dr. Elizabeth Meadows’ Love and Marriage timeline, above ). Alternatively, you may want student to construct individual timelines for use in collecting sources and entries for their self-designed research projects (like the example of Dr. Ole Molvig in his Scientific Revolutions course, above ).

How private or public should my timeline be?

Issues around privacy, intellectual property, and audience will need to be considered when having students create or contribute to timelines. You’ll need to decide if the timelines should be limited to only the students in your class or be made public. Sometimes making a timeline public helps to raise the stakes for the students, knowing that anyone could read their work. On the other hand, students may be uncomfortable leaving their name attached to an online work for posterity. You’ll have to weigh these benefits and drawbacks when deciding to make student-generated timelines public or private. For instance, timelines on controversial topics created by first-year undergraduates might need to be private, whereas timelines created by seniors intended to be used by a specific audience (say, high school teachers) should be public.

You will also want to verify your university’s policy regarding online work, and in the United States, their guidelines for adhering to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). See here for Vanderbilt’s FERPA resources . The following guidelines, provided by the Vanderbilt Institute for Digital Learning, may be helpful:

Make participation requirements in online assignments very clear in the syllabus at the start of term. Not only will this set participation policies, it allows students to choose to enroll or unenroll in course with full knowledge of course requirements. You may take their continued enrollment as consent regarding your policies.
Encourage students to manage their own privacy settings. Giving students the choice of when to use an “alias” and when to publish under their given name not only gives them control of their personal information, it provides an exercise in digital citizenship and literacy.
If full participation under a given name is a necessary component of the assignment, have students sign this consent form . Using this consent form isn’t required (see point 1 above), but it’s a good practice.

How are media handled by the timeline tool? Can students upload their own media or must they link to media already on the Web?

Each of the timelines tools handles media (images, video, audio, etc.) a little differently. Some tools require you to link to media that is already on the Web, while others allow you to upload them from your computer or smartphone. There are some workarounds to situations when a student wants to link to something that doesn’t already exist on the web (such as uploading an image to a image hosting site like Flickr), but you will need to consider if the media is infringing on copyright laws. See the CFT blog post on Finding Non-Copyrighted Images for Presentations .

Deciding on a Timelines Tool or Platform

There are many different tools to choose from, some commercial others are open-source, including basic time-only tools like TimelineJS , Tiki-Toki , and Prezi , and tools that combine timelines with geospatial data like TimeMapper , Mapbox , Neatline , and American Panorama .

Regardless of the tool you use, you will want to consider:

Learning Goals: What are your goals for using a digital timeline? Some tools are better at presenting entries linearly (useful for making an argument or telling a story with a timeline), others make categories and tags easy to see (useful for identifying themes and comparing across contexts), and others offer robust search tools (useful when a timeline needs to function as an annotated bibliography).
Ease of Use: How much time will it take you to learn how to use the technology? How much time will it take your students to learn it? Do you need to have programming experience (like for Neatline) or is it designed for the novice user (like Tiki-Toki)?
Student Access: Will your students be able to access the technology while in class? From home? From the library? Is it accessible for all students in your class, including those with low or no vision or have auditory or other cognitive disabilities ?
Maintenance: How easy is the timeline to maintain and upgrade?
Sustainability: How long will this tool be around? For example, although Tiki-Toki is easy to use, you’re at the mercy of a third party for keeping your timeline up and running during and after the semester. An open-source option like TimelineJS gives you more control, but it also requires more set-up. Also, is it important that the tool allow you to export content for archiving purposes?
Costs: What is the cost of the technology? Some are free, while others use a subscription-based model. Additionally, some need to be installed on a personal or university server, which could be an out-of-pocket expense for the instructor.
Interactivity and Collaboration : What kinds of interactivity (“liking” entries, comments and discussions associated with entries, and so on) does this technology enable? Between student and content? Between student and instructor? Between students? Between student and outside audience?
Privacy: Does your plan for the technology allow students to protect their educational records or maintain certain levels of privacy? Would you be willing to let students use approved pseudonyms?

Outside the Box: Innovative Use of Timelines

Use non-time elements: Who says that timelines need to be measured by time? What if you used page numbers in a novel to map a narrative? For example, Georgetown professor Sarah Stiles’ class created a timeline exploring a non-fiction book using Prezi.
Create a big timeline. Assembling a timeline one entry at a time is fine, but what if we could use a bit of programming to import a large number of timeline entries from an existing database of some kind?
Span the timeline over multiple semesters. If you teach a class more than once, you may choose to have students contribute to the same timeline over multiple semesters. This can help your students see many models of what to include and give them more data for final projects. You can also have students edit existing entries to include missing data, citations, and media elements — all lessons in editing they can use for formal assignments. For an example of a multi-semester approach to timelines, see “ A Pedagogy That Spans Semesters ” by Benjamin Wiggins, director of digital-learning initiatives and lecturer in history at the University of Pennsylvania.
Use the timeline as a presentation. Use timelines to organize a lecture or have students use it as part of an in-class presentation.
Create a timeline outlining a course’s content, readings, and assignments. Use a timeline to experiment with alternative ways to view the progression of a course’s structure. Plot descriptions of lectures, readings, and other course material on the dates they will be discussed or due in class.

Additional Resources

Bruff, D. (2016) “Timelines, EdTech, and Thin Slices of Student Learning.” Agile Learning blog. Retrieved from http://derekbruff.org/?p=3171 .

Groeger, L. (2012). “Some Thoughts on Timelines.” The ProPublica Nerd Blog: Secrets for Data Journalists and Newsroom Developers. Retrieved from https://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/some-thoughts-on-timelines .

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Digital Timelines

# Why Use a Timelines-Based Assignment?

Timeline-based assignments can aid in a variety of learning goals, including:

Analyze non-linear relationships. Students often view history as distinctly linear: Event A happened, then Event B, then Event C. A linear view can make it challenging for students to identify relationships among events. By using spatial arrangements, categories, and color schemes to convey meaning, timelines can help students identify these complex relationships.
Develop historical context. Students sometimes have trouble seeing a particular text or invention or event in its historical context. By visually co-locating events that occurred concurrently in time, timelines can help students contextualize individual events, people, and inventions in relationship with others.
Analyze on a micro-, macro-, or mega- scale. Students sometimes view historical events on only one scale. In using a timeline, students can identify and analyze how seemingly isolated events relate to larger scale history or other micro-macro dynamics, such as local or regional histories in the context of broader national or worldwide events.
Focus on details. Large trends have little details that need to be examined. Use timelines to help your students discover how little details relate to the larger picture.
Develop arguments. Have students select several items from their timeline to develop an argument about change and/or continuity over time.
Compare time periods. Have students examine themes and concepts across two different time periods. An example used in a Religions of Japan course can be found below in the “Timeline as Analysis” section.
Document work through proper citations. Timelines are not just a product in themselves; they can also be a tool to help students learn essential research skills like citations of source material for individual entries.
Understand the development of scholarly discourse or historiography. Undergraduates can be unfamiliar with the idea of academic disciplines as culturally constructed and interpretive. By allowing students to use a timeline to plot the development of scholarly discourse, they can discover how scholars’ understandings of a key figure or subject changes over time.
Create a visual literature review. Much like understanding the development of scholarly discourse, timelines can also allow students to create a visual literature review, with an emphasis on development over time.
Visualize change (and continuity) over time and space. Timelines might consider spatial arrangements, as well as temporal ones. A number of tools support mapping both time and space on a common visualization, including TimeMapper , myHistro , Mapbox , Neatline , StoryMap JS , and American Panorama .

# Types and Examples of Timeline Assignments

Timelines can serve many different purposes in a class, and may even take on multiple purposes. Here are some examples of timeline assignments:

# Timeline as Archive

# EXAMPLES:

# cryptography: timelines in a math course.

Type: Collaborative class timeline using TimelineJS (2015 version) and the SIMILE project’s Exhibit and Timeline scripts (2010 version) (all students contributed to the same timeline)

Course: Cryptography first year seminar, which focuses on both the mathematics and history of cryptography

# MODERN SOUTH ASIA: A TIMELINE TO ACCOMPANY HIST 1160

Travel Log: Voyages of the British ship the Clarence (1858-1873)

# Timeline for Analysis

Students can use timelines to conduct various types of analysis. This type of timeline requires that a timeline have a sufficient number of entries, either created by current or past students.

Ask students to identify patterns and themes among entries in a timeline.
Ask students to make comparison across different time periods in order to identify aspect of continuity and change.
Ask students to contextualize an entry by relating it to concurrent entries in order to develop historical perspective taking, understand ethical dimensions of history, and/or analyze causes and consequences. For example, you may ask students to consider a particular text written at a particular time. What political, religious, and artistic debates of that time might have influenced the writing of the text?
Ask students to evaluate the effectiveness of a law or policy by plotting the chronology of its development and subsequent trials and/or controversies

# LOVE AND MARRIAGE TIMELINE IN A WOMEN AND GENDER STUDIES FIRST YEAR SEMINAR

Link: http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/227613/Love-and-Marriage/
Type: Collaborative class timeline using Tiki-Toki (all students contributed to the same timeline)
Project: The class created a history of marriage in Great Britain and the US from 1500 to 2014.
Meadows wanted to trace “the shifting meanings and cultural functions of love and marriage through an archive of legal, religious, and cultural texts.” During the course of the semester, they added texts that served as commentaries on marriage. As a final project, they wrote individual papers connecting recent judicial rulings on same-sex marriage to entries on the shared timeline.
Grading: Students were graded on selected timeline entries, and they wrote a final paper that used elements of the timeline as evidence. The final project, which required the students to concur or dissent from recent judicial rulings on same-sex marriage using elements from the timeline, was graded based on the quality of the student’s analysis.
Privacy: Meadows chose to have the timeline be publicly available to help develop her students’ sense of ownership of the project. She allowed the students the option to post under their name or under a pseudonym for privacy purposes.
Interesting notes: Meadows found the final papers “enjoyable to read” and the students were proud of what they produced. From an instructor’s point of view, the Tiki-Toki platform was simple for her and the students to use and allowed for immediate course corrections when things went awry (such as when students needed to be reminded to use the publication date of a piece, not the date the anthology was published).

# RELIGIONS OF JAPAN TIMELINE: THINKING THEMATICALLY, THINKING HISTORICALLY

Course: Religions of Japan (approximately 30 students)
Type: Individual student timelines using Tiki-Tiki (each student created their own timeline)
Examples: Example 1 , Example 2 , Example 3 , Example 4
Project: Lowe’s course was a thematically-oriented course covering approximately 2,000 years. One of his main methodological goals was for students to recognize that religious traditions do not exist in a vacuum and instead must be studied within their context. This project asked students to make a multimedia (image and text) timeline on Tiki-Toki of four entries per week based on readings and lectures over the course of the semester. The students wrote papers based on their timelines, gave presentations, and used them as a study guide.
Students will be able to uncover patterns obscured by standard narratives in the historiography.
Students will be able to relate materials across weeks in the course by thinking about them synchronically (alongside other events from the same time period) and diachronically (within historical trajectories).
Students will develop a note-taking system for organizing the materials studied in the course. The timeline will act as a resource for study and help students synthesize information.
Students will practice writing regularly with low stakes writing assignments.
Timeline – 25 points total (15 points x 1 point per week and 10 points on overall quality of timeline): Students were required to write four timeline entries per week for weeks two through fourteen. On week 15, students were expected to edit and polish timeline entries for grading. Simply completing these activities will give you full credit for 15 points. Quality points were assigned based on the following criteria: number of entries (at least 60 total for full credit), accuracy, depth (minimum of three substantial sentences), use of media (when appropriate), quality of writing, and citations.
In-Class Presentation – 5 points total: Starting in week three, students delivered short presentations (3-5 minutes) where they summarized some of their new entries for that week, explained any patterns that they saw, and posed a discussion question.
Analytical Paper – 20 points total: Lowe gave students the option to answer one of four prompts. Students were required to use at least one primary and one secondary source and engage materials from multiple weeks of the syllabus. Additionally, they were required to include a one-paragraph post-script (not counted in the 4-5 page total) that explains how the timeline helped with the assignment.
Role of instructor and teaching assistant: Lowe designed the project and periodically checked the timelines to get a general sense of students’ posts. The TA provided the students with written feedback twice a semester and gave final grades on the timelines. Lowe graded the final papers that came out of the timeline. Lowe and his TA divided grading and feedback responsibilities for the in-class presentations.
Interesting notes: Lowe plans to revise the presentation component of his assignment because the presentations at the beginning of the semester had too few entries to be productive. He reflected, “I plan to revise this part of the assignment to have two whole class periods dedicated to student presentations at 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the class. I will ask students to use their presentations to tell a story with a narrative based on their timeline. Many of the presentations devolved into simply sharing a few entries with no effort to connect them into a coherent story.”

# Timeline as Argument

Links: Example 1 , Example 2 , Example 3
Course: Scientific Revolutions
Type: Individual student timelines using Tiki-Toki
Project: HIST 1510 The Scientific Revolution is a course where lecture material is presented thematically, rather than chronologically. This timeline assignment was an opportunity for students to re-organize the course material chronologically. Students were asked to evaluate the concept of “the scientific revolution” through this timeline, and alongside a short written explanation, they were asked to make an argument . The display of names, events, and dates is not an objective representation, but rather an argument weighing relative importance. The project was the combination of a timeline and an accompanying essay.
Grading: Students were graded on a final paper that used elements of the timeline as evidence for their argument.
Privacy: Dr. Molvig allowed the students to choose how to self-identify online; some students chose to use a pseudonym for privacy purposes.

# Timeline for Student-Created Content

# TIMELINE AS TRAVEL ITINERARY

For example, in a foreign language classroom, have students develop timelines to plan an itinerary for visiting a new place that they can describe in the target language. During an in-class presentation, the student can describe places to visit using the target language. This type of project can be connected to other work students do in the course, such as verb tenses, target vocabulary, and presentation skills. For instance, in a section on using future tenses, students can describe the places they will visit during an upcoming trip. Additionally, you can also have students create contingency plans (in case of rain or other delays), which would require students to use conditional or subjunctive tenses as well as weather-related vocabulary.

There are a few strategies you can use to make grading timeline assignments easier:

Light grading vs. evaluative grading. You might grade timeline entries submitted by students only lightly, checking that certain components (title, description, image, citation, and so on) are included. Or you might assess the quality of timeline entries more rigorously, perhaps using an analytic rubric to differentiate among poor, acceptable, good, and excellent quality work in each component.
Grading all entries vs. grading a selection. You might not grade all entries a student submits to a timeline. You could ask the student to select a set of 3-5 representative entries, or you could select 3-5 entries to grade at random.
Grading the timeline vs. grading work based on the timeline. If you ask students to create a final paper or project based on their timelines, you might grade that final project instead of grading the timeline directly. If you do, it can be helpful to ask students to include a note with their final project explaining how they used the timeline. These notes can help you understand decisions students made not evidence in their final projects.

Regardless of the strategy you choose, you’ll also want to:

Discuss timeline entries with your students and establish criteria for what makes for a “good” entry. Consider developing a few “model” entries for your students and/or highlighting particularly good entries during class.
Provide feedback to students about their timelines or entries early in the course. This feedback can take the form of actual grades or could be comments. Some timelines (like Tiki-Toki) allow you and other students to leave positive/negative comments on entries that indicate questions or concerns you may have.

# Other Questions to Consider

# how do i incorporate the timeline into class time.

Some suggestions include:

Display the timeline on the projector during class, and refer to entries as you lecture. Particularly if you noted common themes arising in your students’ entries.
Encourage students to be creative and include pictures, video, music or other media that relates to the topic in their entries. You can then display or play clips in class.
Share a few example entries with the entire class and discuss what makes them “good” entries. There’s also value in having students revise entries during class, perhaps working in groups, or contributing their first entries to a shared timeline during class, when you can troubleshoot.
Ask students to present elements of their timelines to the class. They can describe the trends they see in their entries, provide some ideas of the analysis they may do in their final paper, or perform some other presentation reflective of the goals you have for the course.

# SHOULD STUDENTS WORK COLLABORATIVELY ON A SINGLE CLASS TIMELINE OR ON INDIVIDUAL TIMELINES?

# HOW PRIVATE OR PUBLIC SHOULD MY TIMELINE BE?

Issues around privacy, intellectual property, and audience will need to be considered when having students create or contribute to timelines. You’ll need to decide if the timelines should be limited to only the students in your class or be made public. Sometimes making a timeline public helps to raise the stakes for the students, knowing that anyone could read their work. On the other hand, students may be uncomfortable leaving their name attached to online work for posterity. You’ll have to weigh these benefits and drawbacks when deciding to make student-generated timelines public or private. For instance, timelines on controversial topics created by first-year undergraduates might need to be private, whereas timelines created by seniors intended to be used by a specific audience (say, high school teachers) should be public.

Make participation requirements in online assignments very clear in the syllabus at the start of term. Not only will this set participation policies, it allows students to choose to enroll or unenroll in course with full knowledge of course requirements. You may take their continued enrollment as consent regarding your policies.
Encourage students to manage their own privacy settings. Giving students the choice of when to use an “alias” and when to publish under their given name not only gives them control of their personal information, it provides an exercise in digital citizenship and literacy.
If full participation under a given name is a necessary component of the assignment, have students sign this consent form . Using this consent form isn’t required (see point 1 above), but it’s a good practice.

# HOW ARE MEDIA HANDLED BY THE TIMELINE TOOL? CAN STUDENTS UPLOAD THEIR OWN MEDIA OR MUST THEY LINK TO MEDIA ALREADY ON THE WEB?

# Deciding on a Timelines Tool or Platform

Regardless of the tool you use, you will want to consider:

Learning Goals: What are your goals for using a digital timeline? Some tools are better at presenting entries linearly (useful for making an argument or telling a story with a timeline), others make categories and tags easy to see (useful for identifying themes and comparing across contexts), and others offer robust search tools (useful when a timeline needs to function as an annotated bibliography).
Ease of Use: How much time will it take you to learn how to use the technology? How much time will it take your students to learn it? Do you need to have programming experience (like for Neatline) or is it designed for the novice user (like Tiki-Toki)?
Student Access: Will your students be able to access the technology while in class? From home? From the library? Is it accessible for all students in your class, including those with low or no vision or have auditory or other cognitive disabilities ?
Maintenance: How easy is the timeline to maintain and upgrade?
Sustainability: How long will this tool be around? For example, although Tiki-Toki is easy to use, you’re at the mercy of a third party for keeping your timeline up and running during and after the semester. An open-source option like TimelineJS gives you more control, but it also requires more set-up. Also, is it important that the tool allow you to export content for archiving purposes?
Costs: What is the cost of the technology? Some are free, while others use a subscription-based model. Additionally, some need to be installed on a personal or university server, which could be an out-of-pocket expense for the instructor.
Interactivity and Collaboration : What kinds of interactivity (“liking” entries, comments and discussions associated with entries, and so on) does this technology enable? Between student and content? Between student and instructor? Between students? Between student and outside audience?
Privacy: Does your plan for the technology allow students to protect their educational records or maintain certain levels of privacy? Would you be willing to let students use approved pseudonyms?

# Outside the Box: Innovative Use of Timelines

Use non-time elements: Who says that timelines need to be measured by time? What if you used page numbers in a novel to map a narrative? For example, Georgetown professor Sarah Stiles’ class created a timeline exploring a non-fiction book using Prezi.
Create a big timeline. Assembling a timeline one entry at a time is fine, but what if we could use a bit of programming to import a large number of timeline entries from an existing database of some kind?
Span the timeline over multiple semesters. If you teach a class more than once, you may choose to have students contribute to the same timeline over multiple semesters. This can help your students see many models of what to include and give them more data for final projects. You can also have students edit existing entries to include missing data, citations, and media elements — all lessons in editing they can use for formal assignments. For an example of a multi-semester approach to timelines, see “ A Pedagogy That Spans Semesters ” by Benjamin Wiggins, director of digital-learning initiatives and lecturer in history at the University of Pennsylvania.
Use the timeline as a presentation. Use timelines to organize a lecture or have students use it as part of an in-class presentation.
Create a timeline outlining a course’s content, readings, and assignments. Use a timeline to experiment with alternative ways to view the progression of a course’s structure. Plot descriptions of lectures, readings, and other course material on the dates they will be discussed or due in class.

# Additional Resources

Bruff, D. (2016) “Timelines, EdTech, and Thin Slices of Student Learning.” Agile Learning blog. Retrieved from http://derekbruff.org/?p=3171 .

This teaching guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

Whether it is a syllabus, a lecture slide, a video, a textbook, a Canvas page, or a website, you want to make sure that your content is accessible to everyone. By implementing these aspects, you can make your content more accessible, inclusive, and user-friendly for everyone.

Technology over the long run: zoom out to see how dramatically the world can change within a lifetime

It is easy to underestimate how much the world can change within a lifetime. considering how dramatically the world has changed can help us see how different the world could be in a few years or decades..

Technology can change the world in ways that are unimaginable until they happen. Switching on an electric light would have been unimaginable for our medieval ancestors. In their childhood, our grandparents would have struggled to imagine a world connected by smartphones and the Internet.

Similarly, it is hard for us to imagine the arrival of all those technologies that will fundamentally change the world we are used to.

We can remind ourselves that our own future might look very different from the world today by looking back at how rapidly technology has changed our world in the past. That’s what this article is about.

One insight I take away from this long-term perspective is how unusual our time is. Technological change was extremely slow in the past – the technologies that our ancestors got used to in their childhood were still central to their lives in their old age. In stark contrast to those days, we live in a time of extraordinarily fast technological change. For recent generations, it was common for technologies that were unimaginable in their youth to become common later in life.

The long-run perspective on technological change

The big visualization offers a long-term perspective on the history of technology. 1

The timeline begins at the center of the spiral. The first use of stone tools, 3.4 million years ago, marks the beginning of this history of technology. 2 Each turn of the spiral represents 200,000 years of history. It took 2.4 million years – 12 turns of the spiral – for our ancestors to control fire and use it for cooking. 3

To be able to visualize the inventions in the more recent past – the last 12,000 years – I had to unroll the spiral. I needed more space to be able to show when agriculture, writing, and the wheel were invented. During this period, technological change was faster, but it was still relatively slow: several thousand years passed between each of these three inventions.

From 1800 onwards, I stretched out the timeline even further to show the many major inventions that rapidly followed one after the other.

The long-term perspective that this chart provides makes it clear just how unusually fast technological change is in our time.

You can use this visualization to see how technology developed in particular domains. Follow, for example, the history of communication: from writing to paper, to the printing press, to the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, all the way to the Internet and smartphones.

Or follow the rapid development of human flight. In 1903, the Wright brothers took the first flight in human history (they were in the air for less than a minute), and just 66 years later, we landed on the moon. Many people saw both within their lifetimes: the first plane and the moon landing.

This large visualization also highlights the wide range of technology’s impact on our lives. It includes extraordinarily beneficial innovations, such as the vaccine that allowed humanity to eradicate smallpox , and it includes terrible innovations, like the nuclear bombs that endanger the lives of all of us .

What will the next decades bring?

The red timeline reaches up to the present and then continues in green into the future. Many children born today, even without further increases in life expectancy, will live well into the 22nd century.

New vaccines, progress in clean, low-carbon energy, better cancer treatments – a range of future innovations could very much improve our living conditions and the environment around us. But, as I argue in a series of articles , there is one technology that could even more profoundly change our world: artificial intelligence (AI).

One reason why artificial intelligence is such an important innovation is that intelligence is the main driver of innovation itself. This fast-paced technological change could speed up even more if it’s driven not only by humanity’s intelligence but also by artificial intelligence. If this happens, the change currently stretched out over decades might happen within a very brief time span of just a year. Possibly even faster. 4

I think AI technology could have a fundamentally transformative impact on our world. In many ways, it is already changing our world, as I documented in this companion article . As this technology becomes more capable in the years and decades to come, it can give immense power to those who control it (and it poses the risk that it could escape our control entirely).

Such systems might seem hard to imagine today, but AI technology is advancing quickly. Many AI experts believe there is a real chance that human-level artificial intelligence will be developed within the next decades, as I documented in this article .

Technology will continue to change the world – we should all make sure that it changes it for the better

What is familiar to us today – photography, the radio, antibiotics, the Internet, or the International Space Station circling our planet – was unimaginable to our ancestors just a few generations ago. If your great-great-great grandparents could spend a week with you, they would be blown away by your everyday life.

What I take away from this history is that I will likely see technologies in my lifetime that appear unimaginable to me today.

In addition to this trend towards increasingly rapid innovation, there is a second long-run trend. Technology has become increasingly powerful. While our ancestors wielded stone tools, we are building globe-spanning AI systems and technologies that can edit our genes.

Because of the immense power that technology gives those who control it, there is little that is as important as the question of which technologies get developed during our lifetimes. Therefore, I think it is a mistake to leave the question about the future of technology to the technologists. Which technologies are controlled by whom is one of the most important political questions of our time because of the enormous power these technologies convey to those who control them.

We all should strive to gain the knowledge we need to contribute to an intelligent debate about the world we want to live in. To a large part, this means gaining knowledge and wisdom on the question of which technologies we want.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank my colleagues Hannah Ritchie, Bastian Herre, Natasha Ahuja, Edouard Mathieu, Daniel Bachler, Charlie Giattino, and Pablo Rosado for their helpful comments on drafts of this essay and the visualization. Thanks also to Lizka Vaintrob and Ben Clifford for the conversation that initiated this visualization.

Appendix: About the choice of visualization in this article

The recent speed of technological change makes it difficult to picture the history of technology in one visualization. When you visualize this development on a linear timeline, then most of the timeline is almost empty, while all the action is crammed into the right corner:

In my large visualization here, I tried to avoid this problem and instead show the long history of technology in a way that lets you see when each technological breakthrough happened and how, within the last millennia, there was a continuous acceleration of technological change.

The recent speed of technological change makes it difficult to picture the history of technology in one visualization. In the appendix, I show how this would look if it were linear.

It is, of course, difficult to assess when exactly the first stone tools were used.

The research by McPherron et al. (2010) suggested that it was at least 3.39 million years ago. This is based on two fossilized bones found in Dikika in Ethiopia, which showed “stone-tool cut marks for flesh removal and percussion marks for marrow access”. These marks were interpreted as being caused by meat consumption and provide the first evidence that one of our ancestors, Australopithecus afarensis, used stone tools.

The research by Harmand et al. (2015) provided evidence for stone tool use in today’s Kenya 3.3 million years ago.

References:

McPherron et al. (2010) – Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia . Published in Nature.

Harmand et al. (2015) – 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya . Published in Nature.

Evidence for controlled fire use approximately 1 million years ago is provided by Berna et al. (2012) Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa , published in PNAS.

The authors write: “The ability to control fire was a crucial turning point in human evolution, but the question of when hominins first developed this ability still remains. Here we show that micromorphological and Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) analyses of intact sediments at the site of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa, provide unambiguous evidence—in the form of burned bone and ashed plant remains—that burning took place in the cave during the early Acheulean occupation, approximately 1.0 Ma. To the best of our knowledge, this is the earliest secure evidence for burning in an archaeological context.”

This is what authors like Holden Karnofsky called ‘Process for Automating Scientific and Technological Advancement’ or PASTA. Some recent developments go in this direction: DeepMind’s AlphaFold helped to make progress on one of the large problems in biology, and they have also developed an AI system that finds new algorithms that are relevant to building a more powerful AI.

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The Ultimate Guide…

Project Timeline

Brought to you by projectmanager, the online project timeline tool used to plan over 2 million projects..

What Is a Project Timeline?

What is project timeline software, benefits of online project timeline software, must-have features of project timeline software, example of a project timeline, how to build a project plan timeline in projectmanager, best practices in making a project management timeline, project timeline template, how to update your project timeline, how to share your project timeline.

A project timeline is a visual list of tasks or activities placed in chronological order, which lets project managers view the entirety of the project plan in one place. A project timeline typically takes the form of a horizontal bar chart, where each task is given a name and a corresponding start and end date.

A project timeline provides an in-depth overview of the entire project from start to finish. You can see when a task starts and when it’s due—and importantly, whether or not it’s dependent on another task.

A project timeline can be priceless for a project team, but they can be challenging to make by hand or even in Excel. Fortunately, project planning software can create an interactive timeline in just a few clicks.

With ProjectManager, all you have to do is add your tasks and due dates. Want more detail? Add subtasks, milestones, dependencies, cost estimations and more. As your team executes their tasks, your timeline updates instantly, turning it into a powerful tracking device. Try it for yourself with a free 30-day trial.

ProjectManager's task list showing project tasks

With ProjectManager, you can make a timeline in a matter of minutes— Learn more .

Project Timeline Uses

Project timelines give project managers an opportunity to:

Organize their tasks
Show when in the project the tasks start
View task deadlines
Link dependent tasks
Break the project into phases
Identify team members assigned to a task

How Do You Calculate a Project Timeline?

To make a thorough project timeline with a Gantt chart , follow these steps:

Write a project scope statement: A scope statement outlines the tasks, milestones and deliverables for the project. It’s an essential part of the project management plan and it has all the information you need for your project plan timeline
Make a work breakdown structure (WBS): Use this graphic tool to break down the project scope into smaller work packages. The WBS allows you to visualize and organize the project’s tasks, milestones and deliverables by hierarchy to establish a chronological order
Identify task dependencies: Now that you’ve identified every task required for the project, find out which of those activities are dependent on other tasks to start or end
Estimate task duration: Make a reasonable time estimate for each task. This is a critical step to create your project management timeline, and determine the time required to complete the project
Define deadlines: Determine how much time your team can spend on each task
Set milestones: Milestones are important dates that mark the end of one phase and the beginning of the next, which makes them an important component of a project management timeline. Milestones are reached by completing task sequences and deliverables

Free Project Timeline Template

Need help building a project timeline? Try ProjectManager’s free project timeline template and practice adding tasks, dependencies, phases, milestones and more on a dynamic timeline.

On the left-hand side is the data grid, where the various phases of the project are outlined. Under each color-coded phase are the tasks associated with it, including WBS, assignees, due dates and other resources needed to execute the scheduled tasks.

The project timeline on the right is where things get interesting. You can see the whole project in one place, dependent tasks can be linked and milestones added. Put your project timeline knowledge to the test and build one today. Get started for free.

How To Create a Project Timeline

Project management timelines can take many different forms with varying levels of efficacy. They can be drawn by hand, or on a whiteboard, but this method is inflexible and large changes to your project might require scrapping the entire timeline.

Using a spreadsheet loaded up with macros can make for very capable, if time consuming to create, timeline. A project timeline excel template can save you the effort and time it takes to create your own spreadsheet. However, such macro-heavy Excel sheets can prove difficult to maintain for larger products.

To run projects effectively and efficiently, project managers prefer project timeline software that integrates their tasks with an interactive, feature-rich Gantt chart that can schedule, assign tasks, monitor progress and report on performance. Project timeline software is more versatile than project timeline templates because it allows project managers to easily update the timeline and keep track of tasks with dashboards and reports.

Get your free

Use this free Project Timeline Template for Excel to manage your projects better.

As stated, software is commonly used by project managers to create their project plan timelines. Project timeline software is an integral part of the planning process and often includes additional features that help to monitor progress when executing the project.

Using project timeline software is generally regarded as a necessity for keeping a modern project on schedule . It allows managers and teams to see the status of their tasks; that is, whether they’re in progress, overdue or done.

At its most basic, project timeline software creates a graphic representation of the project on a timeline with tasks and milestones plotted across. Tasks can be assigned start and end dates, and display a duration bar that indicates the planned amount of time to complete the tasks. More powerful software offerings can also include further options to manage tasks. Microsoft Project is one of the most commonly used project management software, but it has major drawbacks that make ProjectManager a great alternative .

In ye olden days, project timelines were charted on paper—or a chalkboard, if ye olde project manager was lucky. While it did get the job done, these early solutions were extremely limited. Having to make changes required creating a whole new timeline, which takes time.

As project management has emerged from the caves and embraced digital technology, the humble project timeline grew dramatically in power. Online project timeline software offers a centralized data repository in which everyone involved in the project can access the project timeline and other critical project documents and data. This means that managers and teams can access the project timeline when they need to, even if they’re working different shifts and located in different timezones.

Using an Online Project Management Timeline

Every project is impacted by the triple constraint of time, cost and scope. To start controlling the time and scope part of that important triangle, you need to create a project timeline during the planning stage.

The project timeline helps everyone on the project team by giving them a roadmap of where they are, and where they should be, at every point in the project. Timelines and schedules are essential to execute the project plan.

Tasks are given start and end dates and show on the timeline as a line connecting to points in time. If some of those tasks are dependent on another to start or finish, these task dependencies can be indicated on the project timeline as well.

This assists a manager by keeping those dependencies visible and preventing possible bottlenecks that could block the time during the execution of the tasks.

If you’re in the market for project timeline software, make sure it has these key features.

Define Project Phases and Set Important Deadlines

You can use a milestone feature to break up a larger project management timeline into more manageable phases. Milestones mark the end of one phase and the beginning of a new stage of the project. They can also be used to indicate any important dates or deadlines in the project.

Link Dependent Tasks to Avoid Bottlenecks

Connecting dependent tasks is essential to avoid bottlenecks later on in the project. Look for a tool that can do this quickly and simply, and that also has the ability to identify and assign all four types of task dependencies.

Know the Percentage Compete for Each Task

Tracking the progress of tasks once they’re being executed is a crucial component of knowing if your project is on schedule. A robust timeline software will have features that do this on the timeline itself, but also hopefully with a dashboard that provides instant status updates.

Make Quick & Easy Changes to Your Timeline

A must-have feature is the ability to simply edit your timeline as changes occur in the project. Rather than rebuilding your timeline, you want a tool that can drag and drop the tasks to their new dates and update all related tasks to keep your timeline accurate.

Help Your Team Work Better Together

Teams need to be given the tools they need to work more productively. Project timelines should be shareable to keep everyone on the same page. Tasks should be able to have files attached and teams need to be able to communicate at the task level, especially if they work remotely.

Share, Manage & Update Anywhere and Any Time

Organizing tasks is essential to executing your timeline efficiently. A timeline tool needs the ability to share to keep everyone on the same page. Improve productivity by tagging tasks by priority. You should be able to add tags to filter your tasks and quickly find what you want.

Let’s look at an example of a project timeline to get a better idea of what it’s used to accomplish.

A screenshot of a gantt chart in ProjectManager

On the right-hand side of the timeline is a list of your tasks and subtasks. These tasks can be further broken down by phases, and given different colors to distinguish one from another. It is, for all intents and purposes, a regular spreadsheet; it has columns for dates, costs, etc., and rows signifying each task or subtask.

But it’s on the left side where the timeline comes to life. Every task listed on the right is represented on a Gantt chart. Each task is represented by two points in time, the start and end dates. Between those two points is the duration bar.

Those diamond symbols indicate milestones . When you see a dotted line connecting two tasks, that tells you that the tasks are dependent on each other to start or finish before the other can start or finish.

ProjectManager is an award-winning project management software that helps you build better project plan timelines and stay on schedule. Our interactive Gantt chart is more than just a timeline—it’s an integral part of our larger feature suite. To build your timeline, try our software free for 30-days and import your task list.

Set Task Duration

Tasks need to have an estimated start and finish date to chart on a timeline. Once you’ve identified the task and its priority, you need to figure out its duration and dependencies.

As shown in the project timeline example below, add the start and finish dates on the left hand column and the timeline will automatically display those tasks with a duration bar connecting the start and finish dates.

ProjectManager's Gantt chart showing a manufacturing project timeline

Link Dependencies

Dependent tasks can bottleneck teammates unless you keep track of them. Having a tool on your timeline to identify task dependencies will help you keep your team working uninterrupted. Check out the dependencies in the project timeline example below.

Linking dependent tasks is easy, just drag and drop one dependent task to the other. There’s also a link button that will also do this function.

Create Milestones

A milestone is a way to break up the project into phases or to note important dates. A milestone is one point in time that marks the end of one phase and the beginning of another. Milestones are represented as diamonds in our sample project timeline.

Highlight the task you want to turn into a milestone for the project. Just click the milestone button and you’ll see it on the timeline symbolized by a diamond.

Set Baseline

A schedule baseline captures your project management timeline as planned. Now when you execute the project and start recording actual progress, you can compare one to the other and see if you’re on track.

Automatically set a project baseline (once you’ve completed filling in your project timeline) by using the settings bar. Once set, our tool will automatically compare planned to actual progress.

Assign Team

Turn your project management timeline into an active planning tool by using it as a springboard to assign tasks to your team.

Teams can be assigned tasks directly from our Gantt chart. They can then easily collaborate by commenting at the task level to facilitate working with teammates who work different shifts.

ProjectManager's Gantt chart lets you create project timelines and assign tasks

Track your Project Timeline

As the project progresses you’ll need to make sure your project stays on schedule. ProjectManager offers you a variety of project tracking tools such as Gantt charts, project dashboards, calendars and task lists. On top of those tools, you can also use timesheets to keep track of your team’s time and workload.

Related: Free Timesheet Template

When you’re making a project management timeline, there are a few tools and practices that will help you to ensure it is as accurate as possible.

Gantt Charts

Gantt Charts are the perfect tool to create a project management timeline. They allow you to visually represent tasks, dependencies, milestones and deadlines

Estimate Duration of Tasks

A successful project manager must be able to determine the time each task will likely take. An accurate time estimate of the duration of each task is essential for planning, scheduling and creating project management timelines. The Program evaluation and review technique (PERT) is a useful method to estimate the duration of tasks.

Identify Resources

Resources are necessary to execute the tasks and produce deliverables. They can be people, materials, tools and other supplies. A project plan timeline is important to understand when you will need those resources and who is going to use them.

Revise Your Project Management Timeline Regularly

Projects change and your timeline must always reflect those changes. Using project management software is the best way to create timelines that can be updated as your project progresses.

Communicate with Your Team and Stakeholders

Meet regularly with your team members and stakeholders to communicate any changes made to your project management timeline. Project timeline software facilitates the communication process because it allows you to easily make those changes and share your timeline with your team and stakeholders.

Critical Path

Identifying the critical path is important because it allows you to know which are the critical activities that determine the duration of your project. Knowing which tasks must be completed on time to complete the project on schedule is important to create project management timelines.

Using project timeline software can help you streamline your project and get your team to work more productively, but not everyone is ready to make the leap. A project timeline template can be the perfect solution to get you acquainted with one.

Check out our free Gantt chart template , which organizes your tasks on a timeline. You can set dates and duration of tasks. It will even allow you to differentiate project phases customizing colors on the Gantt.

We’ve also created a blog explaining how to make a project timeline in Excel from scratch. However, you’ll likely soon want to try our online tool, as it will allow you to link task dependencies, assign those tasks to teams and automatically update in real-time as teams file their status.

These and other features make our Gantt chart software a better choice than a project timeline template to create and update your project management timeline.

Communication is the common thread that ties together all aspects of managing a project, and it is a core pillar in maintaining a project timeline. A timeline is only as good as the schedule it reflects. As that schedule changes , and it will, the timeline must change with it.

Project changes can come from various places. You can have external issues, such as weather or a disruption in your supply chain, which causes delays. If and when these happen, you need to keep your timeline current.

Communication can help keep you updated on changes like these—by staying in touch with your suppliers, for example. Your team is an invaluable resource, too. Stay in regular communication with them. They’re on the frontlines of the project and will catch issues first.

Other changes can come from stakeholders whose expectations alter. To manage your project timeline more effectively, schedule presentations with stakeholders to keep them updated on progress and to field any questions or requests they might have about the project.

In order to facilitate communication, your project timeline has to be shareable. Your team needs a copy to know when the tasks they’re assigned to execute must be completed within the project timeframe.

Stakeholders also need to have the project timeline. They are invested in the success of the project and want to know the big picture as it moves from stage to stage. To keep them updated, you’ll need to have them shared on current copies of the project timeline.

How to share the project timeline depends on the tool you’re using. If you use a project timeline template it can be printed and distributed. Obviously, this isn’t ideal. As noted, projects change and the last thing you want is to have multiple copies of various iterations floating around.

Sharing with Project Timeline Software

If you’re using a digital tool, then you can export the project management timeline and save it as a PDF. This can then be printed out or emailed to whoever needs it. The timeline is still a static document, but you can name it by date and avoid confusing it with an older version.

The best option is using a cloud-based tool that gives you a shared timeline that everyone can access but only certain team members can edit. That way the timeline is always front and center in the project management tool they’re using and is updated in real-time to make sure everyone has current data and is working from the correct schedule.

ProjectManager is a cloud-based software that delivers real-time data to help you make better decisions when managing your project. Online Gantt charts help you organize tasks on a timeline, real-time dashboards monitor progress and one-click reports keep stakeholders informed. Try our timeline tool today from free with this 30-day trial .

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How to create a project timeline in 7 simple steps

Wondering how to transform your project management game? Learn how to streamline your tasks and dependencies by creating an adaptable project management timeline that's suitable for any industry and profession.

Fret no more. This guide offers a comprehensive example of how to create a project timeline suitable for any professional, regardless of their job title, industry, or department. Follow these steps and learn how to build project timelines that put you in the driver’s seat and build your own project timeline template .

What is a project timeline?

A project timeline is an important project management tool that visually represents the schedule and details the sequence and duration of tasks. It breaks down a project into parts and supports effective workload management by using integrations such as a work breakdown structure (WBS). A project timeline is more than a static calendar; it functions as a dynamic guide that adapts to the project's developing needs, ensuring that goals are completed quickly and within anticipated timescales, whether in a major enterprise project or a small business initiative.

How to create a project timeline

Creating a project timeline is a structured process that lays the foundation for successful project execution. It begins with defining the project’s scope and objectives.

A good timeline not only displays tasks in chronological order but also incorporates critical elements like task dependencies, resource allocation, and milestones.

This is where the functionality of the timeline comes into play. It should provide a clear, visual representation of the project’s flow and allow for easy tracking and updates. The timeline should be both comprehensive and flexible, able to adapt to changes while keeping the project on track.

1. Create a project brief

To keep all project stakeholders aligned on the plan, every project should start with a project brief . It serves as a roadmap and is a way to explain big picture details, like the purpose, goals, milestones, and vision of the overall project. Here are a few questions to answer in your brief:

What are your goals for the project, both internally and externally? What are the project deliverables?

Which internal and external stakeholders are a part of the project? What are their roles?

What is the timeframe for the project? What are the most important dates?

What is the project scope ? Do you have a project scope statement?

What are the key milestones of the project?

Let’s put this step into practice. You’re responsible for planning this year’s client appreciation dinner. Your personal goal for the event is to be as organized, productive, and efficient as possible . You’re confident you can do it, and understand it all starts by putting together a cohesive brief for your event. Your answers to the four questions listed above are:

What are your project goals, both internally and externally?

The internal goal is to plan a high-impact client event under $15,000. The external goal is to achieve a 50% RSVP rate and 80% attendance rate.

Which internal and external stakeholders are a part of the project?

The internal stakeholders are the event’s planning committee (John, Sam, Tara, Linda), the VP of Client Success, and the Marketing team. Externally, the stakeholders include all current clients, and certain vendors (catering company, event venue, etc.).

What is the time frame for the project?

The project planning kicks off on January 15, and the event will happen on August 30.

Which tasks should be considered project milestones?

Publishing the registration page, securing the venue, and signing certain vendors.

Once you have your project brief and goals outlined, you’ll be ready to work backwards and figure out all of the steps you need to take to get there, and you can start creating a project timeline.

2. List your to-dos

In order to have a successful project timeline, you’ll need to create a list of everything that will need to happen throughout the project planning process, all the way to your final deliverable, whether it is a report or an event. Think both big and small in terms of steps. Any tasks that will help you get your project completed on time and on budget should go on this list.

At this point, don’t worry too much about the order of all of your steps or when you need to get them done—we’ll cover that later.

For example, the breakdown for our client appreciation dinner might look like this:

Write an event plan

Finalize budget

Confirm event venue

Select catering

Choose event theme

Design creative concepts for event

Set up an RSVP page

Send invitations

Advertise event

Finalize presentations

Prepare all event collateral and swag

Create a day-of checklist

For longer or more complex steps, break them into smaller, easy-to-digest subtasks. Not only will it help you figure out the true scope of a step, but it’ll also ensure you don’t forget any small details and make tackling it more manageable.

In our event example, to make the "Select catering" step less overwhelming, we would split this part of the project into a digestible task list:

Create a list of possible caterers

Get quotes from each caterer

Compare quotes and menus

Meet with top picks

Choose caterer

Finalize contract

3. Estimate how long each step will take

Once you have a comprehensive list of every step in your project, you’ll allocate an amount of time each will take to complete. When doing this, balance giving your team enough time to get project tasks finished and staying within your overall time frame. Once you know how much time each task will take, you’ll be able to properly plan and sequence each task to create a project roadmap.

Continuing on with our client appreciation event example, let’s take the “Select catering” step, along with each of its subtasks, and estimate how much time the smaller tasks will take, in chronological order.

Select catering (9 weeks)

Create a list of possible caterers (1 week)

Get quotes from each caterer (3 weeks)

Compare quotes and menus (1 week)

Meet with top picks (2 weeks)

Choose caterer (1 week)

Finalize contract (1 week)

Based on our time projections, the process of selecting a catering company will take a total of nine weeks. By working backwards, you can determine when you need to start on this particular step and fill in your project timeline with actual dates.

4. Map out dependencies

As you’re running a project, some steps can be worked on simultaneously—especially if different teammates are responsible for each of the overlapping tasks. However, others cannot be started or completed until another step is finished. In other words, some steps are dependent on others getting completed first. For instance, you can’t order food before you’ve selected the caterer. This is one of the many reasons why a timeline is so important. Visually seeing each step, how the steps overlap, and the amount of time each one takes will keep you on course.

This is also the time to figure out who’s responsible for each step. Assigning who’s responsible for what to every part of the project early on will help you spot and adjust timing or resource conflicts, and avoid future surprises and delays. In Step 6, you’ll learn how to share your project timeline with those involved, making responsibilities crystal clear.

One of the tasks for our example event is to send out invitations. While this particular step seems like an easy one, there are several other things that need to happen before we can even think about sending invitations. The invites must be designed, and we can’t design them until a theme has been chosen for our event. One task needs to occur before another starts. For example:

Event theme (Event Planning team) → Design concepts (Linda) → Choose design (Event Planning team) → Create invitation (Linda) → Send invitations (Tara)

It’s worth the time to map out each dependency and the sequence (or order) of each task. You’ll quickly start to see your project puzzle coming together. Deciding who will do what is critical as well. Who will be working on finalizing the event theme? Who will design the invitations? Don’t wait until it is time for a task to start before assigning it to someone—get everything ironed out early to avoid conflicts or hiccups.

The good news is the invitation process and catering selections can happen at the same time, which will be shown on our project timeline.

5. Create your timeline

Are you beginning to visualize what your project timeline could look like ? While it’s not practical to keep that image (and all those tasks and due dates) in your head, it is realistic to get them down on paper (or on screen). Your first instinct might be to open up an Excel spreadsheet or Microsoft presentation—but wait. Since neither were designed to plan or manage projects, you’ll run into some challenges you could avoid by choosing a better tool .

Instead, opt for a project management tool that’s designed to build and manage project timelines —like Asana. Not only will it save you time drawing your timeline (since you won’t have to attempt to hack merge cells and add formulas to turn a spreadsheet into a project timeline), it will allow you to continue managing your timeline after the project kickoff. Dedicated project management software allows you to easily adapt your timeline as you work, and update your stakeholders on changes and progress in real time.

With the right tool, your timeline will be tied to your underlying work and will always stay up to date. It can be the difference between a project running on track and one going haywire.

How to create a timeline in Asana

Use Asana’s Timeline feature to create your own project schedule :

Enter all of your project steps as tasks in a list

Add start and end dates to each task

Add a task owner for each one

Draw dependencies between tasks

Click "Timeline" view to see your list translated into a visual timeline.

[Product UI] Product marketing launch project in Asana (timeline view)

Tip: If you’ve already created your plan in a spreadsheet, you can quickly import it into Asana using our CSV importer integration , and skip to step four.

Project timeline templates to get you started

The easiest way to set up a project timeline quickly is to start with a project template . Below are a couple of project templates, created by Asana, that you can use now. Each type of project starts as a List View, but you can click the "Timeline" tab to convert it into a Timeline:

Product marketing launch template

Event planning template

Product roadmap template

General project plan template

6. Share it with stakeholders

Remember when you added a list of all project stakeholders to your brief at the very beginning of this process? Now that you’ve built your timeline, it’s important to share it with everyone involved. We can promise they will be thrilled to see how clear your plan is. The easier you make their part of the project, the more kudos will come your way throughout the process.

When you use a project management tool to build your timeline, sharing it is quick and seamless. Forget emails and multiple docs—in no time, your stakeholders will know who’s doing what by when.

For the client appreciation event, we will want to share our timeline with everyone involved in the entire project, not just those who have immediate responsibilities. At any time, someone will be able to track their part of the project and its dependencies without having to ping you for information.

7. Manage and adapt as you go

If you’ve ever worked on any project, you know things don’t always go as planned. However, when you’re prepared to adapt, changes don’t seem so difficult to handle. Timelines aren’t just great for planning; they will also help you adjust as delays or changes inevitably happen.

Moving tasks around doesn’t have to be daunting or disrupt the entire project. If one part of the project runs into a delay, as the project owner, you will have clarity on the impact of the rest of the project. Then, you’ll be empowered to move things around accordingly so the overall project can still move forward productively.

As The Balance Careers notes, project changes can be managed within their own specific steps, but once the change is final, it’s time to update your timeline. Because timelines go out of date quickly when plans change, relying on a project management tool , rather than email or spreadsheets, offers a major benefit. As the project owner, it’s your responsibility to communicate to all stakeholders what the single source of truth is (your timeline) and make sure it’s always updated.

Take immediate action. As soon as the change is confirmed, update your timeline to reflect it.

Notify stakeholders. Anyone that is affected by the change to your project timeline should understand how it impacts them and be able to visually see the change on the project timeline.

Determine the impact. Once your timeline is updated, you’ll be able to see if there are time periods that are overcrowded and stakeholders that have too many tasks. Can you move a task to ensure more time? Can someone else take over that responsibility or lend a hand?

To wrap up our event example, let’s say you managed to choose a caterer for the client appreciation dinner. You’re about to finalize the contract when a call comes in that the catering company double-booked themselves. Unfortunately, you must find a new catering company.

With a timeline, it's easy to adjust due dates for any task or any team members that are impacted by this change. The positive part of this challenge is that we’ve already gone through several of the initial tasks and can see that reflected on the timeline. While this is a frustrating problem, it feels more manageable because our timeline has kept us organized and on track.

Types of project timelines

Project timelines are as diverse as the projects themselves. The reason for this variety lies in the distinct nature of each project, where factors like scope, complexity, industry, and team size dictate the most suitable timeline format. This diversity ensures that every project can have a timeline tailored to its specific needs.

Choosing the right type of project timeline is an important step in project management. The key is to assess the project’s requirements and consider factors like:

Project duration

Level of detail needed

Team's working style

For instance, projects requiring close monitoring of deadlines might benefit from a Gantt chart, while those emphasizing flexibility might opt for a Kanban timeline. Additionally, the availability of project timeline software and tools should also be considered to ensure compatibility and ease of use.

Knowing you've selected the right type of timeline often comes down to its effectiveness in project execution. A suitable timeline will streamline the planning process, facilitate clear communication among team members, and provide a realistic overview of the project’s progress.

If the timeline allows for easy identification of bottlenecks , supports effective time management , and aligns with the team’s workflow, it's likely a good fit for the project.

Gantt chart timeline

A Gantt chart is a popular project timeline tool that provides a visual overview of tasks scheduled over time. It helps teams see the start and end dates of project phases, helping with time management and identifying potential bottlenecks.

For example, a Gantt chart can be used to manage deadlines and identify potential delays in a construction project by outlining stages such as design, procurement, and construction.

Vertical chart timeline

This timeline is a variant of the traditional Gantt chart, displaying tasks along a vertical line. It's effective for smaller projects or when you need a concise list of tasks without detailed scheduling.

In event planning, such as organizing a conference, a vertical timeline can efficiently display the sequence of tasks like venue booking, speaker confirmation, and marketing.

Historical timeline

Particularly useful in educational or retrospective projects, a historical timeline outlines key events in chronological order. When dealing with complex projects, this format can help streamline the visualization of project phases.

A historical timeline, for instance, could be used to help with the educational component of a museum exhibit project by listing important historical events or eras in chronological order.

Kanban timeline

Kanban timelines, inspired by Kanban boards , focus on the progress of tasks from "to-do" to "done." They're excellent for teams emphasizing teamwork and agile methodologies, where tasks move through different stages.

For example, software development teams often use a Kanban board to track the progress of features from conception to implementation.

Critical Path Method (CPM)

The Critical Path Method is a more sophisticated approach that identifies the sequence of interdependent tasks that affect the project's timeline. It's pivotal in complex projects where time tracking and precise planning are key.

In a big manufacturing project, for instance, CPM can identify and keep track of important steps like design, production, and quality control to make sure the job is finished on time.

Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

PERT is similar to CPM but focuses more on the time each task takes. It's beneficial in projects where time estimation is challenging by providing a project plan timeline that considers uncertainty.

In a research and development project, for example, PERT can be used to estimate the time needed for various phases like conceptualization, experimentation, and product testing.

Project timeline examples

Effective project timelines are more than just theoretical concepts; they are proven tools that drive successful project outcomes. They enable precise coordination, effective resource allocation, and timely completion of tasks.

A notable example is NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity Project. The mission's success was heavily reliant on a meticulously crafted timeline, coordinating hundreds of scientists and engineers. This precise planning facilitated the rover's successful landing on Mars in 2012, demonstrating how a well-managed timeline can lead to extraordinary achievements in highly complex projects.

Project timeline example 1: Digital marketing campaign

In a digital marketing project, a Gantt chart timeline could delineate phases like market research, content creation, and campaign execution. The project team might use timeline tools to track critical tasks, ensuring effective time management when meeting campaign deadlines.

Scenario: A digital marketing team at a tech startup is launching a new app.

Market research phase: The team sets a two-week period for market analysis to understand the target audience.

Content creation phase: Over the next month, the team develops blog posts, social media content, and email campaigns.

Campaign execution: The final phase involves a six-week rollout of the created content across different platforms, with weekly reviews.

With the Gantt chart timeline, the team can see how each phase is progressing, adjust to delays in content creation, and move resources around more efficiently, all of which led to a successful campaign launch.

Project timeline example 2: Boutique retail business

For a small business project, a simple vertical chart timeline or a Kanban timeline might be more suitable. Businesses can use this kind of timeline to make project timelines that are easy to follow and keep up-to-date by showing important tasks like product development, marketing, and sales.

Scenario: A boutique clothing store is planning to expand its online presence.

Product development stage: Tasks include selecting new products and setting up an online store. Each task is moved from "to do" to "doing" to "done."

Marketing stage: This involves social media marketing and email marketing tasks, tracked similarly through the Kanban board.

Sales monitoring: The final stage tracks online sales performance and customer feedback.

Using a Kanban timeline, the store effectively handles its growth into e-commerce, keeping task management flexible and ensuring a smooth transition to online sales.

Common questions about project timelines

Knowing how to create a well-organized project timeline is a great first step towards understanding how to use this powerful tool, but you may still have a few more questions. You’re not alone. Here are answers to a couple common questions people have about project timelines:

What’s the difference between a timeline and a Gantt chart?

Gantt charts focus more on workflow and task dependencies. They are more linear and don’t account for changes or multiple things happening at once. Timelines are flexible and adapt easily to changes in project plans. They allow the workflow to be updated effortlessly. Both are organized as bar charts and serve as visual tools.

How can you track project progress, especially if you’re managing multiple projects?

[Product UI] Project portfolio for managing multiple projects (Portfolios)

This is tough to do in spreadsheets, but easier in a project management tool. There are multiple views to be able to see one project at a time, or you can manage multiple projects through a portfolio-style view .

In other words, you can visualize when you’ll have more time to work on specific tasks, and when you’re at capacity, you can adjust as needed to even out your entire team’s workload .

Create your next project timeline confidently

It’s not enough to just come up with a project plan. Determining how to execute it is just as important . Developing a timeline of how the plan will evolve is critical to the planning phase and also makes managing the project more efficient.

Using this step-by-step process for every project management timeline will keep you on task and less stressed. Try it out, adapt it to your business, and share it!

To take your project timelines even further, create your next timeline using Asana .

Related resources

What are story points? Six easy steps to estimate work in Agile

What is a flowchart? Symbols and types explained

How to choose project management software for your team

7 steps to complete a social media audit (with template)

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Creative Assignments: Map and Timeline Exercises

by Thomas Keith | May 7, 2019 | Instructional design , Services

This post is an installment in an ongoing series that explores possibilities for creative classroom assignments. We will showcase courses that have successfully employed creative assignments, and introduce tools and strategies that can help your students master material more fully and deeply, along with helping you to assess their knowledge and skills.

Previous installment: Podcasting

Why use creative assignments in the classroom?

Creative assignments fall into two broad categories: formative and summative. Formative tools, such as collaborative mind mapping, allow students to explore ideas and concepts, systematize their thinking, and make progress toward mastery of new concepts. Meanwhile, summative assignments can offer students the chance to create a lasting artifact that they can share with others, giving them a sense of meaningful accomplishment. Such assignments are often both high- and low-stakes; they make it easy to hold students accountable for content mastery without adding large amounts of extra work. Whether plotting a map, constructing a timeline, recording a podcast, or making a video, your students will be able to combine traditional academic research with practice in flexible, innovative thinking.

Those students who are less comfortable with the constraints of academic writing may find the challenge of creative assignments to be uniquely stimulating. In addition, thanks to the many software tools now available for pedagogical use, your students can collaborate to create attractive, compelling projects, even when they are not in the same physical space. In the process, they will acquire technological skills and competencies that are of great value in today’s wired world.

Map Exercises

Maps reach far beyond geography. The movement of people, things, and ideas plays a role in countless intellectual disciplines. As an easily understandable visual representation of such movement, maps can allow you to detect relationships and trends that purely abstract data might conceal.

In the past, the use of maps in the classroom has largely been limited to show-and-tell, but digital mapping tools have brought about a pedagogical revolution. Students can make their own maps, “pin” information such as text captions or audio clips to locations on their maps, and, with certain tools, even track movement through space.

A number of easy-to-use tools for digital map-making are readily available. Google’s GSuite includes My Maps, a powerful, intuitive app that allows you to select from multiple types of underlying map (political, satellite, terrain, etc.) and plot points or lines/routes. You can make your map interactive by adding notes with text, images, video, or external links. You can also create a Geo chart within Google Spreadsheets; simply open your spreadsheet and choose Insert -> Chart, then choose “Geo chart” or “Geo chart with markers” under Chart Type. Geo charts are valuable for converting numerical data into an easily comprehensible geographical picture. You can also create three-dimensional, immersive tours using Google’s Tour Creator .

A map of notable Civil War battles, created with Google Maps

Faculty and instructors at many major universities have had success with map assignments in the classroom. Prof. Julia Gossard, now at Utah State University, introduced a map exercise into her course “Global Early Modern Europe” at the University of Texas at Austin to help her students see how early modern Europe interacted with the peoples and nations beyond the borders of the continent. Not only did her students learn, through the process of mapping, some of the basic truths of early modern life – e.g. the great distances and lengthy times involved in voyages by sea – but the collaborative process of building a map and tracing connections brought the subject to life in a way that her students found enjoyable and fascinating.

Here at the University of Chicago, faculty members Niall Atkinson and Patch Crowley, both in the Department of Art History, have used digital maps in their courses to help their students contextualize art and architecture within their physical/spatial environment. Prof. Atkinson was able to show his students the path that the marble used in Michelangelo’s sculptures took from the quarry to the sculptor’s studio, emphasizing the physical process of sculptural production and the costs and labor involved. His students also built a collaborative map of Renaissance architecture. Prof. Crowley used images from Google Earth to introduce classroom discussion on how we use and interpret images, paying particular attention to the ways in which electronic media filter our perceptions and affect our viewing process.

Prof. Niall Atkinson discusses his use of mapping and graphical visualization tools in art history courses.

Further Resources: Maps

Ditch That Textbook offers creative ideas for exercises with Google’s My Maps app.
See also Richard Byrne’s “How to Use Google’s My Maps in Your Classroom” .

Timeline Exercises

Just as map exercises allow students to contextualize how people and goods move within space, so timeline exercises allow them to contextualize movement and change over time. Unlike a paper timeline with its static string of dates, a digital timeline allows for interactivity: students can “walk” through a timeline and see how events in different parts of the world or different arenas of thought overlapped, or view media attached to dates (still images, audio, video) to engage with history in a rich way and learn content through multiple modes.

Many tools for digital timeline creation are available. TimelineJS , from Northwestern University’s KnightLab, allows you to set up a basic timeline with nothing more than a Google Spreadsheet, add media from popular sites (e.g. Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, or Vimeo), and embed the code for your timeline in a webpage or blog to display it to the world. TikiToki , another Web-based software platform, offers options such as banded timelines (multiple timelines displayed in parallel, making comparison easy) and 3D timelines. As a simpler, quicker option, you can also create an annotated timeline as a chart type using LucidChart’s timeline template. Because Google Suite is engineered to make collaboration easy, this option works well for group assignments.

Timeline exercises are increasingly being used in higher education in creative and stimulating ways. In her “Foundations of Western Civilization” course at Utah State University, Prof. Julia Gossard has her students create a timeline of the history of food , using TimelineJS, so they can understand the vital role that agriculture and fluctuating food supplies have played in the course of human history. Here at the University of Chicago, the students in Christopher Dunlap’s Spring 2016 LACS course “Sciences as Solutions to Latin American Challenges, 1500-2000” used TimelineJS in conjunction with the University’s blogging platform, Voices, to build an interactive, multimedia timeline of the history of science and technology in Latin America (site requires CNetID and password to view).

Further Resources: Timelines

Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching offers valuable advice on how to craft effective timeline assignments.
For practical insights into what makes timeline assignments successful, see also Derek Bruff’s “Timelines, Ed Tech, and Thin Slices of Student Learning”.

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Timelines in the Classroom: Making Connections

Timelines help learners make connections between the present and past visually appealing and chronological. Arranging events along a timeline makes it easier for learners to understand their relationships. The format also appeals to visual learners by embedding rich media in the timeline.

Timelines Across the Curriculum

It’s very common for history or social studies educators to use timelines in the classroom, whether to plot events from a battle or highlight milestones from a particular era. However, using timelines isn’t limited to just these subjects. Here are assignment ideas for using timelines in other subjects.

Visual arts

Guide learners to choose an artist and map out the highlights of their career, focusing on their achievements in their particular field of art.

Assign learners a genre of music and a period, and have them select and justify the most influential songs of each decade.

English language arts

Have learners create a chronological timeline of the main events in a book. If it is an independent novel study, learners can learn about new books from their peers’ timeline presentations. If it is a class novel study, learners can present their timelines to each other, defend their main event choices, and discuss how they differ.

Assign learners a topic, like genetics, evolution, or biochemistry, and guide them to identify the advancements made in that field over a particular timeframe.

Technology & Digital Literacy

Create a list of technologies such as social media, digital games, television, radio, the internet, and mobile devices. Have learners choose and justify ten top milestones and plot them on a timeline.

Timelines as Summative Assessments

You can use timelines as a summative assignment in any subject by having learners map out the key events you covered in the unit chronologically. It will help you identify if they met all of the unit’s objectives and provide them with study notes for written assessments, like a test or exam.

While there are various ways to have learners create their timelines using paper, many free websites provide interactive and easy-to-use timeline tools. Check out the following list to see which tools suit your classroom’s needs.

Creating Timelines With Interactive Tools

The free version of Tiki-Toki offers one timeline per user. It is browser-based, which means no downloading. You can create colour-coded categories that provide for further grouping of events. You can embed images, videos, and text into each timeline event. For those using Chromebooks, there is also a Tiki-Toki Google Chrome extension .

This web-based platform offers up to 100 student and educator-created timelines under a free account. The timeline displays large visuals and videos and offers the feature of adding assessment questions. Educators can also browse and embed pre-existing timelines that align with their curriculum.

Timetoast is a free public account that allows you to create and publish timelines online. While it is not as visually appealing as other options, the learning curve is low and easily accessible.

TimeToast The development of Apple timeline

2D Digital Timelines

Canva is a free tool to create poster-style timeline infographics. The learning curve is incredibly low for the beautiful images learners can create with this application. While it is web-based, it also comes as an app for iPads .

This free website allows users to create timeline infographics using pre-made templates and drag-and-drop design elements. Users can use the extensive library of images or their own images.

Creating timelines in the classroom, whether digitally or on paper, allows learners to visually depict information and make stronger connections between past, present, and future events.

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Lesson Plan: History of Information Technology

Description.

This lesson allows students to explore the history of information technology. Students will have the opportunity to create a timeline of events and select a specific event to research and present.

Download the lesson plan

Scroll to the related items section at the bottom of this page for additional resources.

TechnoTimeline

Illustrate the significance of historical events. Design an innovative graphic organizer in Google Slides or PowerPoint.

Price information is unavailable.

To learn more about TechnoKids Computer Curriculum please contact a TechnoKids Associate in your area.

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Learning Objectives

Students create a timeline that explains significant events. Using either Google Slides or PowerPoint, they organize information in chronological order. The timeline activity can be used to identify important events, develop an understanding of a historical period, study changes over time, or analyze causal relationships. Timeline lesson plans integrate technology with history, geography, or social studies.

Unique Timeline Lesson Plans for Kids Increase student engagement with a one-of-a-kind technology project. Students use presentation software to explain the importance of a remarkable person, time period, or event of their choice. Hook student interest and build computer skills.
Teaching with Timelines Integrates Social Studies and Computers Kickstart an interest in history. Boost critical thinking skills as students study a significant milestone or notable figure in time. They plan and arrange research findings, analyze, and determine salient facts, then produce a graphic organizer in a slide show timeline. Teaching a timeline activity helps students to connect historical events and understand chronological information using a graphic display.
Build Essential STEM Skills with Graphic Organizers for Students Develop key technology skills for careers of the future. Teach computer, curriculum, and personal skills all in one fun project. Students learn advanced presentation skills, engage in the inquiry process, and cultivate core soft skills such as communication, organization, problem solving, and confidence.
Complete Digital Resources for Teachers TechnoTimeline includes everything you need: Teacher Guide and Student Workbook in PDF format, Summary of Skills, Checklists, Assessment Tools, Templates, and a variety of samples to inspire and motivate young learners.

Examine timelines to gain an understanding of how a graphic organizer summarizes key events.

Formulate a plan for building a timeline. Select a timeline type and determine a topic.

Research significant events. Organize findings in a document.

Customize a slide for a timeline. Set the slide size, layout, and theme. Apply a slide background.

Emphasize a critical moment or turning point. Illustrate timeline events using pictures.

Self-evaluate the timeline using a checklist. Revise the content and design.

Peer review a friend's timeline. Comment to offer feedback. Use suggestions to improve timeline.

Celebrate a historical period. Print the timeline or present information to an audience.

Is it Significant? Learn to judge the importance of events.
Drawing Workshop: Practice drawing and formatting shapes.
Highlight Events using Saved Images: Use design tips to work with images.

NOTE: Assignment titles and sequence vary slightly between the Microsoft and Google versions. Select extension activities may not be available for all product versions.

Timeline lesson plans begin with samples to inspire students. Next, they research a topic and record findings using an organizer. Once the important moments have been pinpointed, Google Slides or PowerPoint is used to create a graphic display. Upon completion, the sequence of events is shared with others. Topic suggestions are provided including autobiography, family, biography, historical, and book plot timelines. Graphic organizers such as timelines enhance the understanding of connections between significant events and people, visually showing time and causal relationships.

Understand the purpose of a timeline
Use technology to conduct research
Analyze data to recognize the importance of events
Organize events using a timeline
Form connections between people and events
Apply a slide background
Produce a timeline using shapes or a SmartArt graphic
Format objects to produce an attractive graphic organizer
Share a file and set permissions
Post and read comments

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5.0 Just want to say thank you for all of your assistance. I love the units and my students really enjoy them. Y. Yancey, Clarksville, TN, USA, West Creek Middle School November 01, 2016

5.0 TechnoTimeline was a hit with my 8th grade students in the Digital Literacy class. Students researched significant events that happened throughout the years on their birthday (month and day). I will definitely use this again with my students next semester! Thank you TechnoKids for quality curriculum! J. MacDonald, Acton, MA, USA, R.J. Grey Junior High School January 28, 2016

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16 Creative Timeline Examples to Inspire Great Project Timelines

The Team at Apptio
September 13, 2018

This post was updated in January, 2021, to include different creative timeline examples and tie them more directly to project timeline creation tips.

I’ll be honest: I’m a sucker for good visualizations. If a graphic conveys useful information quickly and looks good while doing it, sign me up. I’ll share that bad boy all over the internet in no time.

Creative timelines are one of my favorite examples of useful visualizations. Not only do they convey lots of information in a simple way, they also provide context for that information by displaying it sequentially along with other related events.

Timelines can stretch far back in time or fast-forward into the future. They can show how events happened or are happening simultaneously. Some timelines are even designed in a way to show where things happened in time, giving you geographic contexts for various events.

My point is, timelines are awesome. (Are you already convinced of the power of timelines and did you end up here in your search for a powerful Agile PPM tool to create timelines? I might have the answer for you…)

My second point is, if you’re looking to for a way to quickly convey when something will happen and how it fits into the bigger picture, a good timeline can go a long way.

Project and program managers are acutely aware of this fact, which is why many rely on timelines to share basic project information—milestones, due dates, ongoing tasks, all the important moving pieces—with their teams.

To help you get just as excited about timelines as I am (good luck!) and start applying your organizational skills to project timelines, I found some creative timeline examples I love. Hopefully, these timelines will give you a good idea of graphics that convey lots of useful information while also grabbing their viewers’ attention.

Creative timeline examples you can draw inspiration from

The creative timeline examples in this piece were picked completely subjectively, based on nothing but my own personal taste. There was no academic process in selecting them, I just picked ones that made me say, “Oooh, that’s nice!” Hopefully, you’ll find a creative timeline example or two in this post that you like, as well.

In some instances, I’ve cropped these timelines. However, I’ve tried to include the important parts of the images, and I’ve included the image’s sources so you can view the full timelines for more context.

1. It’s as simple as showing a sequence of events

This creative “timeline” example is really a table of contents. It shows where various chapters are located and gives you a visual summary of what each chapter will be about.

2. You don’t need to get fancy

This hand-drawn creative timeline example shows all the important events of the US Revolutionary War. And it’s still aesthetically pleasing, even though it wasn’t made with fancy software.

3. Provide as much or as little information as you need

This creative timeline example highlights important medical discoveries from medicine’s early days. If you’re just looking to name several important medical advancements, you can do this by reading the timeline at a glance. But if you want to know more, you can look at the wealth of information this timeline provides.

5. Emphasize events that have made or will make the biggest impact

This creative timeline example depicts related events and the estimated impact of those events by using different sizes of bubbles along the timeline.

6. You can compare two (or more) projects at once

This creative timeline example shows the number of media mentions particular diseases got from the media in any given year. You can see how often certain diseases were mentioned compared to others in the same time period.

7. Let people customize your timeline

This interactive creative timeline example lets you play with different variables to quickly assess changes in diverse employment trends at major tech companies over time. The ability to quickly visualize changes year over year makes it easy to see advances and setbacks for minority populations in tech.

8. Show how the past has affected the present

Ever wondered when someone thought Comic Sans was a good idea? Or what the origins of famous logo fonts were? Did you know the font used in the Harry Potter books was first created nearly 500 years ago ??? Well, you can see all that at a glance by looking at this creative timeline example, which matches font origins to modern day literature and marketing.

9. Show how you’ve improved

This creative timeline example looks very simple and straightforward, but it’s actually accomplishing several feats at once:

Separating decades through color-coding
Depicting advancements in technology size and design style
Comparing sales figures to corresponding gaming systems so you can see the comparative popularity and lucrativeness of Nintendo’s various gaming systems

If that’s not an effective use of graphics and data, I don’t know what is, folks.

10. Provide chronological and historical context

This creative timeline example focuses on the history of life on earth. Similar to the above Nintendo timeline, it shows the vastly differing appearance of lifeforms from the start of the earth’s history as we know it to the present day. It also draws attention to when mass extinction events occurred, as well as provide a short description of what was happening on earth during a given time period when different animals started to appear.

11. Show where certain events might have slowed you down

Regardless of your religious beliefs, this creative timeline example does a great job of showing Old Testament biblical figures in time by depicting which patriarchs’ lifespans overlapped. You can also see how lifespans shortened dramatically (according to the Bible) sometime after the great biblical flood.

12. Use the past to justify future expectations

Did you know the creation of cheese was an impressive advancement of biotechnology? Me either, but thank heavens the Egyptians discovered it. I, for one, am forever grateful to this culinary science. This creative timeline example stretches thousands of years into the past and forward into the future to highlight important biotech advances (such as cheese), all on a multi-colored DNA double helix graphic.

13. Simple (but powerful) comparisons will suffice

Bear with me: this graphic is less of a creative timeline example and more of a comparison of time periods. However, I’m highlighting this drug test infographic to show how a simple graphic comparison (different amounts of sand in side-by-side hourglasses) can quickly convey huge time differences. This infographic doesn’t really contain much in-depth information—nor does it need to—because its images are so powerful and straightforward.

14. Emphasize exactly what’s important

This simple—but still creative—timeline example does one thing very well: it separates and conveys information through simple color coding and bold font. I could cut this timeline into different pieces and have a flashcard set of inventors and inventions who influenced the industrial revolution.

15. Use timelines even for short periods of time

A good timeline can really spice up a simple agenda. This creative timeline example takes a wedding itinerary and adds a personal touch with simple graphics. Plus, there’s the added bonus of literally being able to picture how the day will go: I know just from looking at this timeline that the day starts with preparation—makeup, taking pictures—and ends in a huge party.

16. Show how your work is connected to a larger purpose

In the middle of a sprint, it can be difficult to remember what you’re working toward. You can get so caught up in your smaller tasks that you forget the larger project. This creative timeline example shows the phases of a project broken down into sprints, the purpose of each sprint, and how much progress is made at the end of each sprint.

Convey tons of information in the shortest amount of time

Hopefully, these creative timeline examples got you jazzed about all the project timelines you can make for your team. Whether you’re creating timelines by hand on paper or a whiteboard or using powerful data crunching tools to make them, I hope these creative timelines examples have highlighted the important information you should be sharing with your team.

Did I mention Targetprocess is one of those powerful data crunching tools? Because it is. You can visualize and manage every step of your project’s progress with our tool and customize views to quickly communicate when your projects are on track— and quickly fix them when you see they’ve gone off the rails.

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A Brief Timeline

This technology timeline infographic template is a great storytelling tool to engage your audience..

Design style modern
Colors light
Size Letter (8.5 x 11 in)
File type PNG, PDF, PowerPoint

Use this technology timeline template to tell any story quickly and easily. Customize it in just a few steps before you share it with your team, share it online, use it in a presentation and more. What’s your topic of focus today? Consider your time frame, condense your points into five concise paragraphs and then add them by editing each text box. Put your creative stamp on it by applying a color palette unique to you. Use your brand colors, draw inspiration from color-matching principles, or even check out our blog page for design tips and inspiration. Then access our icon library to find awesome, illustrated icons that are highly detailed and eye-catching. These icons will easily attract your audience’s attention and give your timeline the professional look you want. That’s all there is to it! Let us know how your Venngage design experience went and if there’s anything we can do to improve it.

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10 Engaging Ways to Create Timelines

Differentiation , Engagement , Planning , Reading , Social Studies

Do your students have to create timelines to meet academic standards? Check out these 10 different timelines that are sure to engage and motivate your students during social studies with this important reading skill!

Teaching about timelines is a skill that crosses into language arts, science, and social studies, at the very least. It is often found as a graphic source in nonfiction texts that helps students understand the material better, and students are often asked to create a timeline at some point during their schooling. So, why not get creative and make it engaging?

When most teachers think of timelines, they are likely thinking of just a traditional number line with increments displaying dates and an event. *YAWN* While this is indeed a timeline, it’s less likely to engage a student, motivate them, and help them remember the content. That’s why I have 10 – YES, 10! – different timelines to share with you that your students can make!

Wait, what’s that? Ten timelines isn’t enough?

Okay, I’ll compromise: to keep this blog post from reaching novel-like proportions, I’ll only write about ten different timelines. However, if you’re in need of more timeline goodness, check out this bundle of TWELVE timeline activities !

I know, I know–now the ten different timelines aren’t nearly as appetizing, huh? Still, give ’em a read-through–I guarantee you’ll be able to save your timeline hunger here! Let’s get started.

The 10 Different Timelines

All of the timelines below share the same important information as a traditional timeline. They share the date of the event, along with what happened, and some even ask why it is important. Many request an illustration and, of course, require students to present them in chronological order. Teachers could even ask who was involved, where it happened, and so much more! The ideas are limitless!

1.) The Puzzle Timeline. Provide each student with one puzzle piece per event on the timeline. Inside the puzzle piece, have them illustrate the event along the top half and describe it along the bottom half. Include the date. Then, piece the puzzle pieces together into one long row. I would then glue them along a piece of construction paper for an adorable display. Then, you’ll end up with something like this:

2.) The Chain Link Timeline. Provide each student with a strip of paper for each event (or construction paper, if you wish), and have students write about the event on the strip. If desired, you can have students illustrate the event, too. Then, have students link each chain event together to create a timeline chain.

3.) A Chain of Events Timeline. If you don’t like the idea of an actual chain, but want the concept that they are all linked together, then have students write each event and date on a card and what happened at that event on another. Then, have students actually draw chains that link the cards together. See the picture below for a better understanding of what I’m trying to say. Haha.

4.) A Storyboard Timeline. I love storyboards. Take a piece of paper and fold it into the number of boxes you need (based on the number of events). Then, in each box, write about that event. I always have my students include an illustration and a heading for each box. Since it is a storyboard, I try to have my students tell it in a story form, but they still must stick to facts. It can be very interesting. I have also gotten very creative, and we have used our fingerprints with this timeline. You can read about our fingerprint storyboards in this blog post .

5.) The Folded Cards Timeline. Provide each student with an index card (or the like) for each event. Have them fold it in half and glue the back to a sheet of construction paper in a row (see the picture below). Then, on the outside, write the name of the event and the date. You can also have your students include an illustration if you wish. Then, on the inside, have students write about the event. It makes a cute display!

6.) The Old Fashioned Scroll. I have students take a piece of paper and fold it in half “hot dog” style. Then, we glue it end-to-end so it is one really long piece of paper. On each end, we glue straws (though you can glue wooden dowels, Popsicle sticks, or any other materials) and leave a little space for rolling. After that, throughout the paper, we create our timeline. Sometimes we draw a traditional timeline, sometimes we use arrows; it really just depends on our level of creativity!

7.) A Step/Layer Foldable Timeline. I love foldables. I’m always looking for ways to incorporate those into my classroom, so you know I had to have some of them in this post, too!

8.) Foldable Timeline. In this foldable timeline, students have the date on part of the fold, and then under it they can illustrate the event. The description of the event is to the right of the date. It can easily be glued into their notebooks.

9.) The Quick Note Timeline. Each student receives a quick note sheet for each event in their timeline. Then, students complete the quick note, place two holes along the top and string them together for a cute “pennant-like” display.

10.) The Road Map Timeline. In this fun example, students take a poster board or a piece of butcher paper and draw a road. Then, they create street signs to represent the dates and use cars to represent the event. In the example below, we made the cars so they lift up, and under them is where we described the event in detail.

All in all, these timelines make for an exciting and engaging way to practice this important skill while motivating students. And, let’s face it, an adorable display!

Want to save some time teaching timelines?

While you can teach/make each one of these types of timelines in your classroom on your own, I created a Timelines Collection resource that includes ready-to-print directions and images, along with additional tips for you for not just the 10 mentioned above, but for TWELVE different engaging timelines. This low-cost resource is designed to save you a ton of time – whether you want to teach one timeline a month, have the students pick a timeline version as a project to present, or use it as center work. These are good for small group work, individual projects, or enrichment activities.

What are you waiting for? Grab your copy and let’s make timelines engaging again!

Engagement , Reading , Social Studies

2 Responses

Tammy, I love this post and your blog! So many fantastic ideas and resources. I’m in several FB groups with you. Hope to get to know you better!

Hi Susan! Thank you so much! I’d love to get to know you better too! 🙂

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15 Activities & Websites to Teach Kids About Historical Timelines

Chain-links, roadmaps, and more.

Six images of different activities about the historical timeline.

Events in our history, however important, can be a bit challenging for students to grasp. This is especially true when the story is complex. Visualizing the chain of events can help bring concepts to light. We’ve come up with this list of amazing and engaging ways for you to teach historical timelines to your students.

1. Make a Chain-Link Timeline

Students can transform strips of paper into an exciting and informative chain-link timeline of events!

Learn more: The Owl Teacher .

2. Use Felt Animals for Pre-History

Re-use the felt over and over again!

Learn More: The Ophoffs.com

3. Create a Virtual Timeline

Create engaging historical timelines for elementary students on this website tool.

Learn more: Read, Write, Think .

4. Storyboard a Timeline

Each box can include an orienting heading and illustration to create a fun historical timeline!

[contextly_auto_sidebar]

5. Explore The Knotted Line

Check out this artistic and interactive timeline that allows students to explore freedom in U.S. history.

Learn more: The Knotted Line .

6. Use an Online Timeline Maker

This tool makes creating historical timelines very simple, which is great for younger students!

Learn more: Softschools .

7. Craft a Clothesline Timeline

Kids can draw or cut out photographs and hang them to create a historical timeline that’s easy to rearrange.

Learn more: Second Grade Smiles .

8. Use This Printable Road to History

Take your students on a road trip through some of the most notable moments in history.

Learn more: Sabrina’s History Corner .

9. Craft a Colorful Road Map Timeline

Using poster boards, students can draw a road and create street signs for dates. Then, they can use cars to represent the events!

10. Create Timeline Pennants

There’s just something so fun about using pennants to retrace history.

Learn more: Literacy in Focus .

11. Make ‘My Life’ Timelines

One of the best ways to teach students about timelines is to have them tell their own story!

Learn more: MsT Makes Things .

12. Incorporate a Basic Timeline Template

This basic template is the perfect blank template when it comes to teach historical timelines.

Learn more: Josie’s Classroom .

13. Use Sutori

This imaginative and interactive tool is an easy and flexible solution for all kinds of classrooms.

Learn more: Sutori

14. Collaborate With Visme

Teachers and students can easily collaborate with these timeline templates!

Learn more: Visme

15. Put Together a Puzzle Timeline

Let students put the pieces of history’s puzzle together with this creative historical timeline!

Did we miss any activities or websites that help teach historical timeline? Share your favorites by leaving a comment!

Keep the historical fun going with these 10 Primary Source Lessons Every American History Teacher Should Teach .

15 Activities & Websites to Teach Kids About Historical Timelines

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Technology Timeline Assignment

Archie the first search engine.

Tim Berners Lee Develops World Wide Web

First text message sent, toy story released: first computer fully-animated movie.

GPS Goes Mainstream

Apple Releases the First Ipod

Skype is Founded

Mark zuckerberg lauches facebook.

Twitter is Launched

Nintendo launches the wii, list of sources.

10 Powerful Excel Project Management Templates for Tracking Anything

P roject management templates are an essential tool for replicating successful projects. With Microsoft Excel's free templates, you can turn your simple spreadsheets into powerful project management tools.

In this article, you'll find some of the most useful and free Microsoft Excel project management and project tracking templates you'll want to use for your next project.

Microsoft Excel Project Timeline Templates

Let's take a look at the best Microsoft Excel project management templates.

We cover both native and third-party templates here. To find the pre-installed Excel spreadsheet templates, open Excel and search for the respective keyword from the New document screen.

If you're already in Excel, go to File > New to bring up the template search. Check the Managing Microsoft Excel Templates section below for more details.

Excel comes with several timelines and Gantt chart templates provided by Microsoft, but it also integrates templates from Vertex42, one of the most popular third-party resources for spreadsheets.

1. Work Plan Timeline

The Work Plan Timeline template is suitable for a basic project with multiple phases. When you enter your data into the worksheet, the roadmap will update automatically. This template comes pre-installed in Microsoft Excel 2016 and up.

2. Date Tracking Gantt Chart

Gantt charts are a staple in every project manager's toolset. They help you visualize the flow of your tasks and track progress.

With this template, you can create a comprehensive Gantt chart with minimal effort. Just enter each task, complete with a description, who it's assigned to, a percentage to indicate progress, a start date, and allocated days until completion. This template is a Microsoft Excel default.

3. Milestone and Task Project Timeline

If you want to integrate milestones into a basic timeline, this template provided by Vertex42 is ideal. It combines the best elements of a Gantt chart, i.e. the visualization of the task flow, with milestones hovering above the timeline.

Just fill in the respective tables to populate the visual. You can find this template by searching in Excel.

Excel Project Plan Templates

A project plan is a document that may require Excel charts, but is otherwise composed in Microsoft Word. For basic projects, however, you may get away with only a Microsoft Excel document.

4. Simple Gantt Chart

When you search Excel's template repository for project plan templates, you'll mainly find different Gantt chart variations, including this Simple Gantt Chart from Vertex42. What sets it apart from the Gantt chart above is the inclusion of project phases. This template is included in Microsoft Excel.

5. Event Planner Template

A project plan really isn't something you typically put together in Excel. However, if you are planning a small project, like a party, you just need a one-page template that lists the essential tasks and lets you define a schedule and a budget. This template from Office Templates Online is a great start.

Excel Project Tracker Template

A search for a tracker will bring up a wild mix of personal and business-related Excel spreadsheet templates for tracking. However, you can narrow down your search by selecting categories that relate to the project management task you're dealing with.

6. Activity-Based Cost Tracker

This tracking template can help you get an overview of direct, indirect, and general and administrative product costs.

7. Project Tracking Template

This Vertex42 template is essential if you are handling multiple different clients, projects, and/or deliverables. It combines project details, expenses, task statuses, and due dates.

Business Plan Templates

Microsoft Excel 2016 had its own category for business plans. You could search for the keyword business and select the Business Plans category on the right.

In Excel 2019 and onwards, you can perform either query, but the latter misses some templates, while the former might be overwhelming. We recommend looking into the following.

Business Plan Checklist

Creating a business plan can be a complex project in and of itself. This checklist will help you cover all your bases by guiding you through the process using a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis.

Note that you'll find two similar templates in Excel, but they're both identical SWOT analysis checklists, differing only in their formatting.

Startup Expenses

This template is a great starting point for a budding business owner who needs some help with projecting the costs of their endeavor. The template will guide you through the most common assets and services your new business might require.

Once you've filled in all the potential expenses, you'll have a much better idea of how much funding you'll need to raise to get your business up and running. For more business plan templates , take a look at our dedicated article.

Search for Online Templates

Couldn't find the exact project management template you need in Excel? Turn to a third-party online resource for a wide selection of Excel spreadsheet templates. We recommend the following sites.

This website has a few great project management templates for Microsoft Office 2003 and up. The site notes that its templates are mostly related to project scheduling. Anything more complicated might require Microsoft Project or other project management software.

On the page dedicated to project management , you'll find a list of useful material, including, but not limited to, the following:

Project Budgeting
Critical Path Method

Each page contains a quick rundown of what the template does, one or more templates, and further tips and tricks for the respective project management tool. It's a great resource for budding project managers.

TidyForm has a respectable selection of Microsoft Excel project management templates. The most popular categories are listed on the homepage. If you can't immediately spot what you need, switch to the Business section or try the search feature.

When you scroll to the bottom of a section, you'll see a list of popular categories and related categories. This can be helpful when trying to find just the right template. We recommend the following pages:

Project Budget
Project Proposal
Work Breakdown Structure

Still looking for the perfect template? You might have to create custom Excel templates to get exactly what you want.

Managing Microsoft Excel Templates

First, let's see what templates you already have installed in Microsoft Excel. For the purpose of this demonstration, we've used Excel 2019, but the procedure is similar in Microsoft Office 2013 and Office 2016.

Default Templates

When you start up Microsoft Excel, the first window you see will contain a search field for online templates. When you're starting from an existing workbook, go to File > New to arrive at the same view.

Microsoft Excel comes with a selection of pre-installed templates. They are listed underneath the search field. You can pin your favorite ones by clicking the respective symbol in the bottom right of the listing.

Search Online for More Project Templates (Excel 2016)

Searching for the type of template you need is the fastest way to locate it. For example, if you search for the term "project," you may also see template categories listed next to the templates that match your search. The category feature no longer appears in Excel 2019.

Narrow Down Your Search (Excel 2016)

A neat feature is that you can narrow down your search by selecting multiple categories. This helps you exclude templates that may match your keyword, but not your desired category. On the downside, you may find that the perfect template is not available in Microsoft Excel.

Preview & Create Your Template

When you click a template, you'll see a preview with a brief description of what the template provides. You can also pin the template from its preview; the symbol sits in the top right.

To download and use a template, click the Create button, which will open a new Microsoft Excel workbook with the template pre-filled.

Template Ready, Set, Go

Now that you have all the project management templates you could ever need, maybe you're interested in additional tools, tips, and tricks. For example, you could build a custom interactive Excel dashboard to manage data within your projects. The possibilities are endless.

10 Powerful Excel Project Management Templates for Tracking Anything

Eng 470 Tech & Text Capstone Blog

Timelines: Visualizing the Ambiguous

In elementary school, my class did an assignment where we made a timeline of our lives up to that point. When we were born, our first birthdays, when we started school, and other important events in our little lives were spread out on a big piece of poster paper. This lesson taught us how to organize events in our lives and follow a logical flow. I believe this basic principle applies to data visualizations of history in the form of timelines.

Why timelines?

Timelines are effective because they force you to confront a distilled graphic of time. Time can be ambiguous and fragmented when it is spoken or referenced in writing. Take a podcast, for example.

I’ve always had a hard time with history podcasts because it is difficult to place dates in a linear flow without a visual. My opinion on this was solidified when our class was assigned to listen to the Extra History podcast episode Before Windrush: Britain’s long relationship with the Caribbean. Our task was to take note of every date and corresponding event mentioned.

Before completing the task, I had an incongruent and fragmented idea of the events. After completing the task, I was able to clearly follow a logical line of historic events. Even though we didn’t construct a timeline visual, this first step taught me how important visualization is for understanding a linear flow of events.

Context is key

Timelines are not only good for crystallizing a logical flow of events. They can also place events within a broader context. Take this timeline of estimated Trans-Atlantic slave trade number of captives embarked and disembarked per year in the United States (from slavevoyages.org ).

There is a clear dip in numbers from 1775 to 1783. One could easily make the argument that this is due to the American Revolutionary war which took place during the same time frame.

The highest numbers of embarking and disembarking captives is in 1807, which is the same year Great Britain abolished the slave trade. In the same year, American president Thomas Jefferson signed the Embargo Act, prohibiting American ships from trading in foreign ports. These two events coupled with this data raise many questions that could lead to further study. They also form a greater story that round out the historical context in which the data took place.

So, timelines open up a discussion about context and encourage a deeper dive into the full story.

What about Morant?

In an effort to circle back to my previous blog posts , I’d like to consider what a timeline could demonstrate about the events that are described in the Report of the Jamaica Royal Commission. (P.S. check out those posts for a recap!)

The witness testimonies I transcribed, Elizabeth Millett and Catherine Johnson , told stories of time. Creating separate timelines of the events in each of their stories could reveal similarities or patterns within the testimonies that otherwise went unnoticed.

For example, both testimonies revealed names and locations of military activity. Placing these events in a logical flow could allow us to track troops and gain a better understanding of how these troops operated.

This is just one suggestion, but I think it goes to show how timelines open the door for further investigation.

technology timeline assignment

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COMMENTS

Center for Teaching

Why Use a Timelines-Based Assignment?

Types and Examples of Timeline Assignments

Timeline as Archive

Cryptography: Timelines in a Math Course

Modern South Asia: A Timeline to Accompany HIST 1160

Timeline for Analysis

Love and Marriage Timeline in a Women and Gender Studies First Year Seminar

Religions of Japan Timeline: Thinking Thematically, Thinking Historically

Timeline as Argument

Timeline for Student-Created Content

Timeline as Travel Itinerary

Other Questions to Consider

Should students work collaboratively on a single class timeline or on individual timelines?

How private or public should my timeline be?

How are media handled by the timeline tool? Can students upload their own media or must they link to media already on the Web?

Deciding on a Timelines Tool or Platform

Outside the Box: Innovative Use of Timelines

Additional Resources

Teaching Guides

Quick Links

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Digital Timelines

# Why Use a Timelines-Based Assignment?

# Types and Examples of Timeline Assignments

# Timeline as Archive

# EXAMPLES:

# MODERN SOUTH ASIA: A TIMELINE TO ACCOMPANY HIST 1160

# Timeline for Analysis

# LOVE AND MARRIAGE TIMELINE IN A WOMEN AND GENDER STUDIES FIRST YEAR SEMINAR

# RELIGIONS OF JAPAN TIMELINE: THINKING THEMATICALLY, THINKING HISTORICALLY

# Timeline as Argument

# Timeline for Student-Created Content

# TIMELINE AS TRAVEL ITINERARY

# Other Questions to Consider

# SHOULD STUDENTS WORK COLLABORATIVELY ON A SINGLE CLASS TIMELINE OR ON INDIVIDUAL TIMELINES?

# HOW PRIVATE OR PUBLIC SHOULD MY TIMELINE BE?

# HOW ARE MEDIA HANDLED BY THE TIMELINE TOOL? CAN STUDENTS UPLOAD THEIR OWN MEDIA OR MUST THEY LINK TO MEDIA ALREADY ON THE WEB?

# Deciding on a Timelines Tool or Platform

# Outside the Box: Innovative Use of Timelines

# Additional Resources

Technology over the long run: zoom out to see how dramatically the world can change within a lifetime

The long-run perspective on technological change

Technology will continue to change the world – we should all make sure that it changes it for the better

Appendix: About the choice of visualization in this article

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