Thursday, April 21, 2011

Quickly and Easily Create a Historical Timeline Handout

I know that this blog talks about educational technology and that the readership often examines these postings to receive tips on how to use new tools for learning. But sometimes, I am compelled to write about an old tool particularly if the old tool can be used quickly and easily to create something useful.

Today I stumbled accross a nice tutorial video (1 min 39 secs long) on how to use MS-Excel 2007 to make a timeline depicting a series of historical events. The output it makes would be great as a handouts to students in class or via distance, and what I love best about this tutorial is that it really walks you through step-by-step. So if you have never used Excel before you can still accomplish this task easily.

The tuorial video as well as the associated text-based instructions are produced by Microsoft Education. If you have never visited their site, it's worth it. They have a fantastic page that lists all their how-to articles pertaining to several of their software programs including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Publisher and Windows Live Movie Maker. The topics are quite varried and some other good articles include developing an interactive story in PPT and creating a class newspaper in Publisher.