Thing 22- Where did the time go?

The program I used for this Thing is Preceden, an online time line.  As a social studies teacher, I am constantly trying to show my students how civilizations developed throughout history, and this seemed like an interesting tool to try.  I had a lot of fun with this program.  It is easy to use and has countless uses:  simplified curriculum mapping, lesson planning/organizing, project planning/organizing, personal planner, development of civilizations- just to name a few.  You can change the view of the time line from years to months, days, etc to suit your needs.  Plus, you can keep your time line private or make them public for all to see.  I have embedded my timeline into this blog(see below).

The only downside to the timeline (for me) is that it always shows the earliest date on the line.  I had added a layer of Presidents and my timeline of course started with Washington but the rest of my entries were from 2009-2010.  I could scroll across the screen and move the timeline, but I couldn't get it to start with the current date.  I contacted Preceden to ask how to change this, if possible.  Otherwise, the whole program was pretty user friendly. 

This is a great "web 2.0" tool.  It is easy to use, free and online.  You don't have to download anything to use it and the site has other timelines to browse and use.  I hope to use it in my class, perhaps at the end of the year as a wrap up to help my students see how the curriculum tied together.





Another great tool is one that was shared with me by my tech coach. It is a program that converts online media, such as YouTube music videos, into mp3. I used it with my students for a PhotoStory project. It is incredibly easy to use. Just go to http://www.video2mp3.net/ and follow the directions.  I could then have my students edit parts of the song using Audacity before adding it to their PhotoStory. (I lost count of how many free programs were involved in that process!)