Interactive Timeline of the American Revolution

Here is another cool, free tool that can be utilized in the Social Studies curriculum.  It is an interactive site created by the American Revolution Center. Here is a description of the center straight from their about page:
"The American Revolution Center will establish the first national museum to commemorate the entire story of the American Revolution and its enduring legacy. The museum will display its distinguished collection of objects, artifacts, and manuscripts from the American Revolution era and will offer programming, lectures, symposia, and interactive learning for teachers, students, and the general public."


The highlight of the site is the interactive timeline for the American Revolution. You will see a highlight of significant dates. There are also artifacts as images. If you click on an artifact it will enlarge. In some cases there are links to video and or audio podcasts about the artifact or event.  This is an excellent site to pull up on an interactive whiteboard. You can use it to introduce the American Revolution or as a review. As I learned from Free Technology For Teachers the site also includes quizzes and lesson plans.


Here are some thoughts about how this can be used within project based learning environment.

Project Ideas




** Students can select an event in the timeline. They can record and audio podcast that explains the event in greater details.

**Students can find additional images for a particular event and create a digital story that documents the event.

**Students can develop a narrative that places them at the event. Speaking in the first person they can write about what an individual who was at the event experienced. This can be created into a digital story as well.

**Using Google Earth students can create an interactive tour of these events. They can highlight battle grounds and points of interest. Each marked point can contain text, images, narration or links to additional content.

http://timeline.americanrevolutioncenter.org/