Dipity Timeline Review

Today, I will be reviewing the Dipity Web 2.0 timeline tool. This tool could really fall into many categories such as Productivity tool or Presentation tool, but can be used as a Critical Thinking/Problem Solving tool as well.

The tool can be found at https://www.dipity.com.

Using Dipity, it is very easy to create timelines that can be used in many different arenas. It is really just that simple. One of the nice things about Dipity is that you do not have to download anything and you can add video, audio, photos, links, and an array of other text based data – features that just aren’t available in the standard Office suite for timeline production. Dipity can be used to track progress towards a goal or deadline, brainstorm an outline for a project, recreate a historical timeline, or to show a mission timeline in digital format. The truth is, anything that can be tracked by time can be shown in a clean, easy to read product using Dipity.

The skills required are very basic. If you know how to use basic software applications and can navigate the internet and your own file library, you can create a timeline.

As for resources, you will need a computer, internet access, and an email account – for registration purposes.

To see how to use Dipity.com, please view the following videos:

Logging in and creating an account.


Adding events and completing the timeline.


Working with the timeline and adding links.


Embedding into a blog.



There are many ways in which this tool could be used in a teaching environment. The most obvious example would be in a history class. A simple, yet effective assignment would be to have students create a timeline for a specific period, era, or even a single battle. You could start with a broad assignment for the first few weeks where students would create a timeline of all of the battles of the Civil War. After that, they could spend one to two weeks creating individual timelines for each battle in the Civil War. At the end of the semester, each student would have a digital study guide that could help them organize their thoughts and knowledge on the subject prior to final tests or presentations.
This would also make for a great way to teach flight students mission planning. In the Marine Corps, we teach backward planning. Using Dipity, I would show students how to start with the end state of the mission and plan backwards by adding each significant event in the mission to the timeline. The final product could then be used to give the mission brief with a nice, visual, step-by-step sequence of events.

Advantages for using Dipity are that it creates a visual tool to use in many ways. Adding video, images, and links creates a multimedia product that can explore subjects with depth. The interface is rather simple and would be easier to manipulate than an Office suite product.

The main disadvantage of Dipity is that you must have internet access to create your timeline. Also, with the free version, you are limited to 3 timelines, 150 events, 5,000 embed page views and 50MB upload space. While I do not see the embed and upload limits being an issue, the number of timelines could quickly exceed 3. On the other hand, there is a 20% discount for students.

Here is the timeline we created in the video. Feel free to manipulate the timeline in order to get a feel for the final product.

Sample Timeline Review on Dipity.

This week's review is on the creativity tool, Xtranormal.  This is a fun little tool that can be used to make animated movies.  Additionally, I have included some screen shots to go along with the video.  Please let me know what you think.

Enjoy.

The video upload on Blogger was struggling, so here is the link to the YouTube video.

Xtranormal Review by Seth Goldstein

Wordpress review

Here is the audio review I did of Wordpress.  

Greetings...

Hi.  My name is Seth and I am a Masters student at the University of Houston.  This summer I will be working on a couple of courses that look at the use of Web 2.0 tools in educational settings.  In this blog, you will find reviews of several tools.  Each week, I will choose a tool, review it, and post my findings here.  Please feel free to comment on the tools, the reviews, or make recommendations for other tools for review.

Enjoy.