Timelines your whole class can build
Timeline Source is a free history timeline maker that handles what other tools get wrong: BC dates, dates nobody is sure of, and events that are dated from one another. There are no ads, nothing tracks your students, and anyone can start without an account.
Why it suits a classroom
- Free, with nothing held back. Every feature is there for everyone. The site runs on donations, and asks nothing of anyone who gives nothing.
- No ads, and no tracking. Nothing on the site follows anyone to other sites, and nothing about a student is sold or used for advertising. Visits are counted by page, never by person; Your data says exactly what is kept.
- History as it really is. A date can be uncertain by a decade or a century, shown as a shaded band rather than a false certainty; 1 BC is followed by AD 1, with no year zero; and one event can be tied to another, so that a treaty dated "twelve years after the war began" moves when the war does.
- Works in a browser. Nothing to install, on a laptop, a Chromebook, a tablet or a phone.
Getting your class started
Students under 13, or anyone without an account
Try it now opens the whole editor with no account and no email address. The timeline is kept in that browser, on that device, and nowhere else — nothing about the student reaches us.
Because it lives in one browser, it stays on that computer. On shared machines, or where the browser is cleared each night, have students hand in a Snapshot (below) before they finish.
Students 13 and over
An account needs an email address, a username and a password, and keeps their timelines safe from any device. A whole class can sign up at once from one school network.
A username is shown as the author of anything a student publishes, so suggest one that is not their full name.
New to it? The guided tour lights up the real editor one control at a time; it takes a few minutes, and the Guided tour button in any timeline starts it again. The Help page covers everything at length.
Sharing with your class
- Hand out a timeline. Make one of your own, switch it from Private to Public, and share its link. Anyone can open it, with or without an account.
- Give them a starting point. Students with accounts can use Save a copy on your timeline and build on it; their copy credits you.
- Compare two timelines. Layers lays another public timeline over the one on screen — Rome over Han China, say — and works on Try it now too.
- Find ready-made ones. Explore lists every public timeline, by subject and by date.
Handing work in
- As a picture. Snapshot copies what is on the screen, or downloads it as an image, with the title along its foot — ready to paste into a document or submit. It works with or without an account, and publishes nothing.
- As a link. A student with an account can make their timeline public and send you its link. Bear in mind that public means public: it appears on Explore and in search engines, under their username, until they switch it back to Private.
Every timeline starts private, and only its author can see a private one — including you. That is deliberate, so a picture is often the simplest way in.
Ideas for lessons
Build the unit
Each student, or each group, builds the timeline of the unit as it is taught, and adds to it week by week.
Weigh the evidence
Where sources disagree on a date, students set the uncertainty and write in a note why: what the evidence is, and who says what.
Side by side
Two groups build two civilizations; laying one over the other shows what was happening at the same time.
Lives in context
A biography against the events of its age, from birth to death, with the moments that shaped it.
Then and now
Family history: students place their own family's dates, as exact or as uncertain as they are, beside the history they lived through.
Review before an exam
One shared timeline of everything the exam covers, built by the class and handed out as a link.
What we keep about students
On Try it now, nothing: the work stays in the browser. With an account, the email address, the username, a hash of the password, and the timelines themselves. Private timelines are seen by their author alone. An account can be closed at any time from its dashboard, which deletes it and everything in it, and its data can be downloaded first. We never supply anything to train AI models, and we never show advertising. The full account is on Your data, and the rules are in the terms.
Questions, or something your school needs to know? Write to .