History is best learned when it comes to life. One means of making history more relevant is to utilize timelines. These old fashion teaching tools help students understand how important events connect to each other and progress, thereby allowing students the opportunity to comprehend why history is important to the present. It also gives students the ability to see how modern events might change our society. As such, making a timeline can help students learn history more efficiently as well as lead them to take a greater interest in historic events.
Achieving Better Results With Technology
Children love to use technology to do everything. This is especially true for younger students, who desperately want to learn how to use computers, thus turning a timeline into a technology lesson can accomplish more than just one educational goal. Adding colours, graphics, and, potentially, animation, to any chart will give students the chance to practice creative arts as well as have fun doing their school work with readily available programs like MS Powerpoint and others, including those programs that might be found online at no cost.
Furthermore, a timeline can be made electronically or on paper, but it must have a purpose. As a group activity, students can have fun by quizzing each other on what events come first and why they resulted in the subsequent events. This reinforces the impact of historic events as well as offers students an opportunity to play a game. In fact, it may be helpful, and fun, for students to design their own timelines by selecting events that demonstrate how historical events developed. This would teach students relationships as they identify historical trends in an enjoyable manner.
The Importance Of Developing Connections
Meanwhile, it is important to remember we study history to learn from the successes and mistakes of the past. As such, developing the connections between historical events and events of today is just as important. Students may find it entertaining to compare modern events with timelines of historical events. In fact, comparing the progression of the lives of historical figures to the lives of students can be quite educational and fun. Meanwhile, getting family members involved by charting the events of ancestors can only strengthen the classroom experience.
Timelines are tools used by historians to better understand historical trends. Teachers can create fun and valuable lessons by affording students the opportunities to see how historic events are relevant to the modern age. Allowing students to experience and explore is the best way for them to have fun in history class. And as such can be a great tool when preparing for the finals. So long as we use history to understand how it affects our lives and how our decisions today will affect tomorrow, history is not a dead subject, thus timelines are invaluable tools.