Timeline

Why Timeline?

Additional Resources
Training guides, online tutorials, demos and update information for this interaction are available on our website.
This link will open the Timeline support page.

Step One:

The first page asks you to make decisions about the appearance of the timeline.

Timeline Title:  An example of a good title is 'Ancient Pharaohs'. Type in a title that places all of the events in the same category.



Step Two:

Total width of the timeline: Decide how wide your timeline should be. The default setting is 500. That means that your timeline will be 500 pixels wide. The typical computer screen ranges from 800 pixels wide to 1280 pixels wide.

Important note: If your timeline is wider than the screen, the timeline will scroll when the student places the cursor on the left or right edge of the timeline.



Step Three:

Choose Style: Decide on the color scheme of the timeline. This affects the color of the timeline itself and the color of the title bar on the dialog box.



Step Four:

Choose Background Texture: Decide on the background image of the timeline. The choices of image appear at the top of the page. The next step allows the teacher to display the background image with two different effects.



Step Five:

Choose How to Apply Style to Texture: Decide if you want the color of the style to apply to the background image. Choose 'Color' versus 'Not Color'.

Decide if you want to view the background image or not. Choose 'Not Transparency' in order to view the background image.



Step Six:

Select an Image: Find an image that closely relates to the title of this timeline. Images can be copied from Internet, or loaded from the teacher's file system.

[See instructions on how to use lodeStar to learn about the different ways teachers can import images to lodeStar.]



Step Seven:

On the next page, you can begin typing in the information relevant to the first event in history that you wish to present to the student.

Starting index: Type in the year of the first event in your timeline. Examples of a properly entered year:
     1939
     1942

[Currently, the Timeline only understands years.]

Summary: Type in a short description of this event. The short description appears in the title of a dialog box that pops up when the student clicks on an event.

Content: Type in the information related to this event. Keep this information short and to the point.

Click on the Add button at the bottom left corner of the page.This will add a new event to the timeline. Repeat this step as often as needed.



Step Eight:

Adding more events to your Timeline

A Timeline with one event is not very interesting so click the “plus” icon to add additional events or click the “minus” icon to remove an event.

Click the “Plus” icon to add a new page
Click the “Minus” icon to remove an existing page

Step Nine:

Saving your Project

When you've finished typing in all of your sentences, click on the 'save' button at the bottom right corner.



Step Ten:

Previewing your Project

After you have saved you project, you can see how you project will look to your users by simply clicking the Preview button located in the the upper right corner of lodeStar.

The lodeStar Previewer window will open up and expand to full screen.





Timeline Version 5.01.25
Copyright © 2001 - 2007 lodeStar Learning Corporation. All rights reserved.