Creating Timelines

I spent some time over break playing around with Timeline JS, “an open-source tool that enables anyone to build visually rich, interactive timelines.” Their step-by-step instructions really make it easy, as does the fact that you build the whole thing in Google Sheets using their template. In a couple of hours I created this timeline of Montana homesteading, pulling many of the images from the Montana Memory project. (More on using Montana Memory here.) Granted, it helped that I know the subject matter, but I still think this project is well within a middle-school or high school students' reach.

I wrote about online timeline creation software back in 2012, but never actually sat down to try to use one before now. I'm a convert! (One caveat: All the pictures show up when I view my timeline in Google Chrome, but not when try to view it in Microsoft Edge. Go figure.)


If you like timelines but are tech-shy, or simply don't have the time to incorporate another project into your class, we've got two plug-and-play timeline lesson plans, designed to take one to two class periods each: 

Montana Women at Work: Clothesline Timeline Lesson Plan (Designed for grades 4-12) This primary-source based lesson asks students to analyze historic photographs to draw conclusions about women and work from the 1870s through the 2010s. Students will discover that Montana women have always worked, but that discrimination, cultural expectations, and changing technology have influenced the types of work women undertook.

Montana Women's Legal History Lesson Plan (grades 11-12) Students examine sample Montana legislation from 1871 to 1991 that particularly affected women's lives, try to put them in chronological order, to explore the impact laws have on the lives of ordinary people and why laws change.

Looking for more inspiration? Here's an idea for using the tribal history timelines created by the Montana Office of Public Instruction.