The Typewriter and Prezi

"The Typewriter" follows the story of Nandi, an eleven-year old girl in Soweto in the wake of the June 16, 1976 Soweto uprising. Even though she sneaks out to join the older children in a demonstration at the funeral of a peer killed in the riots, she doesn't quite understand what is going on around her. She finds herself in a dangerous position when her cousin, Esther, needs help in hiding a typewriter - used to create leaflets supporting the student protests and a symbol of the resistance movement - from the police.

Because this story relies so heavily on actual historical events, I decided to create a timeline as a sample project. This is a good example of a pre-reading activity that students could engage in to help them better understand the context of the story. Each student could research the history of education in apartheid South Africa and create their own timeline to demonstrate understanding, or a teacher might consider making the timeline a collaborative assignment for small groups or even the class as a whole. I created my timeline using Prezi, an online presentation tool, and embedded images and video to supplement the text.

I had trouble embedding this into the blog, so you can view my timeline within the context of the Prezi web site.

While I love using Prezi as a presentation tool, it was not my first choice for this particular project. I first tried to create the timeline using xtimeline, a free tool for creating web-based timelines. However, the site was running so slowly that I gave up after waiting 20+ minutes to add my first event. I don't know if the site always runs that slowly (although it has both times I tried to use it), but it was a prohibitive feature in my opinion.

I decided that Prezi would work well as a "plan B" given the ability to create a path from event to event within the presentation. The only downside that I can see to using Prezi as a timeline creator is that you lose some of the ability to view the timeline in its entirety as with traditional timelines. It is possible to zoom out to see all of your entries while working in Prezi, but the words become impossible to read. I do like that the tool allows you to upload images and video to include. As I hope you'll agree, in this case the media really enhance the educational value of the timeline.

Of course, teachers could also have students create timelines of the events in the story itself, or they could add the events to the historical timeline, blending fact and fiction in the process. Those would become more a during-reading or post-reading assignment, and I wanted to focus on the activity during the pre-reading phase.

This particular project also demonstrates the importance of testing the web 2.o tools out before giving students an assignment. If I had taken a class of middle school students to the computer lab and asked them to work using xtimeline, my entire lesson plan (and possibly classroom management) could have been derailed if the site continued to not work. Teachers should also consider whether having 30+ students on a site at the same time will impact the speed at which students are able to work. It's a good lesson for all of us!