Breaking down your information to create your timeline

To create your timeline, you will need to think about your topic and break it down into a series of events or milestones. It is really up to you how broad or how granular you would like to go. A broad approach could include a timeline of someone's entire life, from birth to death, while a more granular approach could look at a single day (especially if it is particularly meaningful) or even a few hours.

You will need to gather information about each event that you would like to highlight. This will make it easier for you to create the timeline using the tool that you have chosen.

In this module, we will be working through an example together, using the Life and Times of Malcolm X.

Here is a template that will help you organize all of your pertinent information:

Timeline development worksheet - Blank.docx

Each row in the template is a point or node in your timeline, and the template allows you to collect all of the necessary information per point.

Below is a table that will help you understand the components necessary to breakdown your topic, and to create a timeline, and the information that you will need to collect for each event/point/moment in your timeline.

Timeline information	Definition
Action/event	Notable/meaningful activity within the context of your topic
Date/Time	The date or time that the action took place
Summary of Action	A brief statement or account of the main points of the particular event
Headline	A sentence that provides a gist of the node of the event or activity
Text	Text or description that you want to include highlighting the action or activity.
Location	Place where the event took place, if applicable
Media	The image, video, audio that you wish to embed in your timeline.
Alt-text for Media	Text that will be seen for accessibility purposes by screen readers, for example.
Media Credits	All related media credits; at a minimum Title, Author/Creator, Source (with link), License