Capzles

Capzles is another timeline tool that has a lot of great multimedia functionality. You can incorporate videos, music, photos and text into a timeline to tell a story, represent a series of events or any number of other things you might want to do with a timeline. The end result feels a bit more like a photo sharing tool in that you are able to view a timeline either from beginning to end or by just scrolling through and clicking on the image or event you want to jump to. At this point there doesn't appear to be more than one viewing option so you can't see the dates and event details until you actually select the event or scroll over it. They are still in Beta with this so more functionality may be added later. For now, it is an easy tool to use and provides a nice looking slideshow type of timeline.

Dipity and Time Tube

You are probably wondering what a tool named Dipity allows you to do that could be remotely educational. Well, if you are interested in creating timelines with your students then Dipity is a tool you might want to try out. It is web-based and free (isn't everything I write about?) and takes advantage of the many benefits of Web 2.0 functionality, which means you can add images and video from around the web, embed and share your finished timeline and even geographically tag the different events or entries on your timeline. Timelines can be viewed in multiple ways including as a flipbook on a map and, of course, as a traditional timeline. Check out the timeline I have included on JFK to get an idea of the kind of thing you might be able to create. Timelines can have multiple authors as well.

TimeTube is a mashup from Dipity that allows you to type in a keyword and then have a timeline automatically generated that includes a variety of videos that match your specific keyword. I like the concept of this but since there isn't a clear way to filter out videos you can get a lot of oddball stuff included in your timeline. For instance, when I used the search term "JFK" I got news footage and historical video clips along with a clip of a comedian who was talking about JFK and a video of people dunking a basketball to a hip-hop soundtrack. I realize I could have tried to refine my search term but it would be nice if you could edit the timeline once it was created to weed out the videos that don't fit with your educational goals.