Dipping Into Time

Within the Standards for the 21st Century Learner, Content Collaboration, the following standards are addressed by the web 2.0 application Dipity:  Standard 1.3.4 Contribute to the exchange of ideas within a learning community and 3.1.2 Participate and collaborate as members of a social and intellectual network of learners.  Dipity made the Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning, AASL 2011. 

As stated at the website Dipity's mission is to organize the internet's data by date and time. 

To use the free services provided by Dipity click on Create a Timeline.  You must be over 13 years of age, give your first and last name, a username and password.  As with many online services, tabs run across the top right hand side that give users the opportunity to go to their Dashboard, Profile, My Topics, Following (topics or people) and Settings (for your account).

To begin a topic click on Create a Timeline.  Initially you need to fill in blanks for the topic name, a short description, a subject category, your timezone, a topic thumbnail photo and your settings on who can view and contribute to this topic--Private or Anyone.

When you continue a screen appears that  allows you to add events to the timeline, search Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Google News, add photos from Flickr and Picasa, include videos from either YouTube or Vimeo, incorporate blogs from Blogger, WordPress or Tumblr, gather music from Last.fm or Pandora, use messaging from Twitter or Friendfeed, attach other Dipity timelines or use Simile Timeline XML.  Yelp, Digg, Delicious and any RSS feeds are allowed to become part of a particular timeline.

Timelines or topics as well as events can be edited or deleted. 

When looking at a timeline there are several views:  timeline, flipbook, list and map.  A timeline can be shared on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, MySpace, StumbleUpon or embedded in a website or blog with HTML code.

This application would be a fantastic educational enhancement to any unit involving the passage of time; author studies, events, or even student of the week with assistance from parents for younger students.  Timelines could be started with students completing them or students could work in groups. 

This would be another technique for reviewing a book in the historical fiction genre; create a timeline, fiction and real, based upon the storyline.

Iditarod-The Last Great Race on Dipity.

Dipity is definitely going in my educational toolbox for this coming year.