Working with Timetoast

 

 

I have used Timeoast for the first time with my students in class, and it has been a total success.

 

The learning objectives of the activity were the following:

-To learn more about different aspects, like: culture, literature, history, etc.

-To summarise and synthesise important information.

-To get used to new digital tools.

 

We can see some advantages of using Timetoast:

-The students feel very motivated.

-They learn to use new digital tools.

-We encourage cooperative work, as they work in pairs or small groups.

 These are the steps we followed to set up the activity:

Firstly, I showed them how it worked so that they were used to this new tool.

Secondly, I chose the texts they were going to work with. They  selected different topics of their interest: festivities, English writers of 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, famous kings and Queens and Biography of relevant people.

They had to complete the timeline and add some photos, although it was not always possible.

Finally, they were asked to prepare an oral presentation explaining their works to the class.

During the process, we had to solve some problems. They were mainly problems related to internet connection or how to sign up for the first time.

 Respecting the students’ reaction, I can say that they were very motivated as they were practising something different and new for them. They really liked the visual part of that.

 However, we need more practice to improve some things, like how to summarise a text and get the most important ideas.

 All in all, I consider the use of Timelines a very useful tool which helped me to achieve my objectives:

-To learn to summarise and select important information from a text.

-To develop students’ digital competence, learning in a motivating way.

-To develop cooperative work between students.

Here are some of our Timelines:

Festivities

English Kings and Queens

English Famous Writers