Free Timeline Creation Tools For eLearning Professionals
Timelines are graphical representations of a period of time, on which important moments or events are marked alongside the dates that these events have happened. They can be vertical, comparative, interactive, in a sense that learners are required to click on the time period to know about the event and vice versa, or they can include images and graphics.
Obviously they are incredibly powerful visual tools that can be used not only in education, such as displaying a list of historical events, but also in the corporate world to explain a work process, highlight important details, or show the progression of a product or service. As an eLearning professional you can significantly benefit from using timelines in your eLearning courses to enhance the interactivity of eLearning scenarios, track your learners’ progress, or simply illustrate the evolution of a concept or idea. Fortunately, there are several free timeline makers available. In this article, I’ll share the top 10 free timeline creation tools you can use for your eLearning courses in order to create visually rich and highly informative eLearning experiences for free.
- Office Timeline
It is a timeline maker built inside Microsoft PowerPoint, and you can use it for creating great Gantt charts to properly track the progress of your eLearning program. It is ideal for professional project visuals and project management, especially if the project involves the collaboration of several teams. - SmartDraw
SmartDraw is a visual processor that you can use to quickly create flowcharts, organization charts, mind maps, and project charts, and provides timeline templates that help you create timelines which align and space events and milestones automatically. You can also share your timelines within your organization by transferring them to Microsoft Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Excel. - MyHistro
With MyHistro you can create timelines about events or themes with maps and images and you can use it for multiple purposes, especially for converting corporate presentations into a social marketing tool. It can be particularly useful for training new employees about your organization’s history, philosophy, and vision. - Twitter Custom Timelines
If you are using Twitter for your eLearning courses, Twitter’s custom timelines is a great way to gather all important tweets and hashtags about your eLearning course, the subject matter, and the subject matter experts. Furthermore, you can not only share your timeline on Twitter, but also embed it on your website. - Timeline JS
If you are using Google documents, Timeline JS provides a Google Docs template that enables you to create interactive timelines that are available in 40 languages. You can use this open-source tool to create eLearning stories in which you can pull in photos or YouTube and Vimeo videos, whereas it has built-in support for Twitter, Flickr, Google Maps, Vine, Dailymotion, Wikipedia, and SoundCloud. - Capzles
Another great free timeline creation tool for creating stories for your eLearning courses is Capzles, with which you can generate visually rich timelines that include photos, videos, music, and documents. - Free Timeline
In this website you are allowed to create, save online, and share timelines for professional planning and project management. You are not required to sign up to make a timeline, and you can also use the timelines you create on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, which is essential for your mobile learning courses. - Dipity
A free digital timeline website where you can organize content by date and time. You can use it for creating multimedia timelines, as you are able to integrate audio files, images, videos, links, social media, and text, and sharing them with whomever you want. - Timeline Template
You can use these timelines to help your eLearning team visualize the eLearning project you have in mind, as it enables you to show the detailed steps of every professional plan concisely. Furthermore, all timeline templates are in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint format, so it is particularly easy to customize it. - TikiToki (Basic Version)
TikiToki doesn’t come completely for free, but there is a free version where you can create one timeline at a time, meaning you can delete it and create a new one. Each free timeline you create has its limitations, for example you cannot allow others to edit it and you can only add up to 200 events, but the interface is extremely easy to use and the overall look and feel very appealing and professional.
Now that you know the top 10 free timeline creation tools for eLearning professionals, you may want to know more about how to use timelines in eLearning design and development.
This post was first published on eLearning Industry.
