Doing Dipity

One of the most amazing things I have constantly reinforced is how little understanding students have of time.  Being a social studies teacher, one might be able to understand why I think the passing of time and the sequence of events is a pretty big deal for students to understand.  I think it's difficult for students to understand the importance of many of today's major political and social issues if they lack a historical perspective.  With this in mind, I set forth to find a tool to help students place things into perspective and I think Dipity might be it.

What is Dipity?

Dipity is a service that allows users to gather information from around the internet and organize it by time in the form of a timeline.   In true Web 2.0 fashion, Dipity allows users to create, share, embed and collaborate on timelines through use of multimedia.  Dipity doesn't cater to one specific category of user boasting users of all backgrounds, be them journalists, teachers, students, or even celebrities. 

So how does Dipity work?  The concept is simple users create timelines about various research topics which are them categorized by title.  Timeline creators also have the option of making their timelines public or private and allowing other users to edit.  Timelines can also be "followed" so users can keep track of their favorite topics just like they might keep up with their favorite users on other social networking sites.  Furthermore, to make it easier for users to find popular topics, the main Dipity page lists the "hot topics" of the day.

Will this impact the classroom?

Dipity is a unique tool among web 2.0 sites and its potential for revolutionizing teaching especially in social studies classrooms is great.  Gone are the days of boring lectures students can venture forth researching major historical events and displaying their research in easy to read timeline format.  Also, as their knowledge of a subject expands so can their timelines.  

Dipity achieves all the goals of 21st century learning with ease.  Core subject knowledge will form the cornerstone upon which timelines are built and the research going into timelines will foster great gains in information and media skills.  Critical thinking will manifest as students make choices concerning what to include on their timelines.  The very nature of a timeline fosters communication, but students will refine that skill by learning to use timelines to tell a story.  Students will be able to team up and collaborate on the larger challenges using the tools Dipity provides.  Finally, the flexibility of Dipity to handle wide varieties of content will allow students to be creative in their approach to covering topics. 

Conclusion

The benefits to studying history are many:  History Helps Us Understand People and Societies, History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be, Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship, and History Provides Identity (Stearns).   These concepts are difficult for adults to explain, so perhaps the use of tools like Dipity will allow students a chance to earn an appreciation for the subject.