Common Sense

TOP PICKS | 13 TOOLS

Best Timeline Creators and Templates

Timelines are important tools for exploring a brief period of time or a topic that spans centuries. By exploring and creating timelines, students will learn the chronology of historical events and begin to see the cause-and-effect relationships between time periods. On this list, there are interactive timelines students can explore covering everything from the American Revolution to the concept of freedom in the U.S. to art history. There are also apps and websites that make timeline creation easy, allowing students to sequence events into explorable multimedia stories.

Continue reading

Top Picks

RELATED

PrintPrint | Save as PDF

Timeline Creation Tools

ReadWriteThink

Excellent free resource for all things reading and writing

Bottom line: A language arts teacher's dream; lesson plans, professional development, and all-around quality support.

Grades: Pre-K–12 Price: Free
See full review

RWT Timeline

Simple timeline creation tool for a variety of purposes

Bottom line: Easy-to-use tool lets students create simple, boilerplate timelines.

Grades: 2–5 Price: Free
  • Download from App Store
See full review

Prezi Next

Multimedia presentation tool features useful templates and 3D zoom

Bottom line: With its zoom in and out capabilities, Prezi helps teachers and students go beyond traditional slideshows to put important content front and center.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free, Free to try, Paid The free Edu Standard version includes unlimited storage. The paid Edu Plus version (starting at $7 per month and with a 14-day free trial) adds more advanced presentation features, privacy controls, chat support, and offline access.
See full review

Sutori

A slick way to share knowledge via interactive timelines and stories

Bottom line: With a super simple design, interactive features, and an imaginative personal approach, it's an easy and flexible tool for all kinds of classrooms.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free, Paid While basic accounts are free, they're limited to 200 student stories. Sutori's Premium accounts, which cost $49/year for educators, allow unlimited story creation, student collaboration (in pairs), and exporting stories to PDF. The $99/year Unlimited account adds the ability to upload custom videos and expands collaboration to larger groups.
See full review

Tiki-Toki

Create eye-catching multimedia timelines for any purpose

Bottom line: Multimedia timelines connect events visually, creating pathways for deeper analysis of any chronological story.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free, Paid A free account limits user to one timeline. A teacher account is $125/year and allows for up to 25 timelines (for the teacher) and 50 student accounts (each with 5 timelines). The teacher account also removes ads and allows timelines to be embedded on webpages. Individual accounts range from $7.50-$25/month, depending on number of timelines and editing and embedding features.
See full review

TimelineJS

Timeline tool is useful but limited for coding novices

Bottom line: Check it out if you're a Google classroom looking to create simple, appealing timelines that integrate media and allow for collaboration.

Grades: 7–12 Price: Free
See full review

TimeToast

Simple timeline creator could use more features and options

Bottom line: An easy to use timeline tool for one-off projects, but for sustained use teachers will need to upgrade, and ultimately the features might not be robust enough.

Grades: 8–12 Price: Free, Paid The free Basic version of TimeToast is ad-supported and limited to only one user; however, users can create an unlimited amount of public timelines. The $.99/month Basic plan is ad free, supports 5 users as well as embeddable timelines, moderation of comments on timelines, and collaboration features. The $8.99/month Pro version allows for 35 users.
See full review

Interactive Timelines

The Knotted Line

Unique, artistic timeline lets kids explore freedom in U.S. history

Bottom line: Students will benefit from this eye-opening and interactive approach to studying history.

Grades: 6–12 Price: Free
See full review

Timeline World War 2 with Robert MacNeil

Vast interactive multimedia resource makes history come alive

Bottom line: Forgo the textbook -- students will find the same information and more as they scroll through the timeline and access the multitude of resources.

Grades: 6–12 Price: $9.99
  • Download from App Store
See full review

Smarthistory

Bring traditional art education to life with fresh, interactive multimedia

Bottom line: A worthy supplement to an art history or humanities class.

Grades: 8–12 Price: Free
See full review

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

History and art intersect on the Met's vast, reading-centric site

Bottom line: This resource from the Metropolitan Museum of Art beautifully illustrates art's evolution and is great for research, but more interactivity would help balance out the text-heavy content.

Grades: 9–12 Price: Free
See full review
Scroll back to top

Get tips for using these tools in the classroom

See related resources

Related Top Picks