teaching at the end of the earth

Google Series – Part 2: Timeline

Following on from the Wonder wheel tool, Google have also released a search function called Timeline. This again, can be found in the left sidebar of the basic Google search.

Timeline is a great research function for a basic search. By clicking on Timeline after you’ve started your search you will see a timeline appear at the top of the search page, and everything will be in order of year/date.

What you will discover as you have a go with Google’s Timeline, is that it is not only finding websites that have information that you may be after, but it is searching digitised newspaper or journal articles from a huge number of dates. The search I have done above on ‘great war nz’, has given me a number of digitised newspaper articles.

If you click on a section on the blue timeline at the top, you can go into more detail for a specific period of time. Currently it shows every 20 years from 1840 to around 2000. If I click on the 1900 section I get this more specific dates.

And you can get more specific again by clicking on a year section.

I can see Timeline being used in various curriculum areas for research purposes. It could be great for finding primary and secondary sources. It may also be good for finding information from the time that has been twisted or misinterpreted over the years since the event.

The best way to learn timeline is to get in there and have a play!