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eZedia
Projects Before beginning to assemble the project: 1. Establish a folder on your hard drive for the project. Give it a name you'll recognize. 2. Plan what you're going to do in this time line. What period will you show? Is the project one that is meant to be a "starter" project like this one where students will continue on? 3. Sketch out a format for the frame. 4. Choose whatever pictures you'll use in the project and save those in another folder called pictures or graphics. 5. Have your text ready to go in a text file. Don't use any special effects. Keep your text plain. You'll jazz it up in eZediaMX. 6. Create a new document well for your project so that as you create objects, you will drag them into the well and then save the well continuously throughout the project. Assembling the project: 1. Chose a picture for the background. This is a photo from the San Antonio collection on our website. 2. I brought in the picture and then right-clicked on it to Edit Graphic. I dropped the transparency level to about 37 (look at the little numbers at the top of the slider bar). 3. I added the picture to the background for my frame. 4. Next, I clicked on the text icon and made my title that would appear on each frame of the project. Once I am happy with the font and the size, I'll add it to the background, too. Before doing that, remember to put a copy in your document well. 5. The time line was created with the shape tool. I created a skinny rectangle for the main line and then used Edit Graphic to choose a different fill color for it. I added it to the well. Next, I put it in position on the frame and added it to the background. 6. I decided to stagger the height of the little markers on the time line so that the numbers wouldn't get too crowded. It could get tricky trying to line them up so I used guide lines to keep things even that I could pull down from the top of the frame. They don't show up on the project and you can have as many as you want! 7. After placing my markers on the time line I added them to the background, too. After that, I created text boxes for the years and then made them transparent. Once they were in the right positions, I selected them all at once and added them to the document well. After that, I added those to the background. 8. For the opening frame, I made a text box and had the print be fairly large and bold (Figure 1). On the other frames, I created frames using the shape tool. See Figure 2. 9. I then duplicated my first frame to become my second frame, too. I could also have added the frame to the document well and just have dragged it into each new frame for the project. Figure 1:  10. In Figure 2, we are starting to move through the time line. I made 2 rectangles, one a little larger than the other and gave each a different color. Both rectangles had the transparency level dropped so you could still get a hint of the picture behind. I placed the text box on top. If you do this and find that one of your rectangles is on top, don't worry. Just select the object and go to Objects > Layers and tell it to go to a different layer. Very simple! I also selected the "text" frames I had made with my two rectangles and added them to the document well so I could drag them out when I wanted. Figure 2:  11. Fill in the text for the remaining frames. Figure 3:  Figure 4: Here you see me just having clicked on the marker for 1830.  12. When you're done, go to the first frame and add your Quit and Home buttons. In the Object Information dialog box, set them so they appear on every frame. You could also put them in the well. They're handy to have ready to go. Variations: This took about 20 minutes to do. It would be a much livelier project if I had added voice files, sound, animation, pictures, video clips, etc. Don't limit yourself. I just wanted to show you another possible way to integrate technology into the curriculum. I'll post this project as a zoi file soon. By the way, the information appearing in the text boxes came from: Texas History Timeline - Key Events in Early Texas http://www.lsjunction.com/events/events.htm Weblinks to timeline resources: AlternaTime This is a collection of timelines available on the web that may provide you with some ideas for your own projects. http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/browse.html Anyday Page If you want to know what happened on a particular day, check out this site. You can't control for the year - only the day. It provides a wealth of abbreviated information for any given day of the year. http://www.scopesys.com/anyday/ HyperHistory Online This site provides extremely detailed timelines for a variety of topics that might be traced ranging from science and technology to culture, philosophy, religion, politics, and history. http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html Maps from History What would timelines be without maps? The HyperHistory site has an amazing collections of map resources to assist with the study of history. http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html |