Perspective: A Timeline for the iPad

Great for learning and studying history
Created to make teaching history easier for both teacher and student.
Perspective is a timeline creator and viewer for the iPad. It is loaded with features and designed specifically for teaching.
Study history, hobbies, family trees, etc.

Also great for

- Family trees
- Collecting pictures and information on your hobbies
- Keeping a life and family journal

A few of the many features:

- embed web pages, text, collections of links, and images
- create collections of events into groups with a common color scheme
- zoom from billions of years down to weeks
- bookmarks times and different levels of zoom
- teach from embedded notes while students view timeline on projector (requires VGA adaptor)

Purchase Perspective in the App Store

Try the U.S. Presidents timeline FREE!
can view but not edit

Starter Timelines

U.S. Presidents (3-2-2011)
All the U.S. Presidents linked to Wikipedia

Ancient Near East (7-7-2010)
This timeline currently focuses on the kings of Israel and Judah along with a summaries of their lives from biblical data. Note that my dates are approximate.

Eons of Time (7-7-2010)
This timeline demonstrates Perspective's ability to display time in billions of years.

Download the file, unzip it, and move it to your iPad using iTunes. This will give you some data to play with and explore Perspective's features.

Each one of my timelines is a work in progress, and grows as I use it, so the date represents which edition it is.

If you make a timeline that you would like to share, please email it to me and I will post it here.

How to use Perspective

The Timeline View

To navigate through time simply drag anywhere on the screen. To change the amount of time displayed on the timeline, simply pinch zoom in or out to change the level of zoom. Zoom levels can be chosen in the Options popup.

There are four buttons on the bottom of the screen in this view:

Eye - select which groups are visible.

Bookmark - set a bookmark to easily return to this point in time.

Plus sign - open the editor to add new groups and events and to edit them.

Gear - Options for viewing the timeline.

Event Display in Timeline

Once you have entered event data, close the editor and return to the Timeline View. Navigate to your event and touch it. You will now see the event's data displayed. If you have entered text, image, or a URL, you will have the option of selected to display that information by clicking the appropriate icon. If you have not entered data you will not see the buttons.

The text notes allow for web navigation and pinch zooming. They also allow for making the text larger and smaller apart from pinch zooming in order for you to increase the size of you notes without having them move out of view.

The next button available is the expand button which allows for your notes to be displayed full screen. Next to that is an edit button that will return you to the editor so you can modify this event. Finally there is an X that lets you close this view.

If you have attached an external display through the optional VGA connector you will have the ability to display your timeline to your audience. You will be able to choose how much (if any) of your notes or images to show them. Once you have made your notes or zoomed your image or web page to the appropriate size, touch the action button to send the image to the external display. The external view will hold that image until you close it again. For example, you can leave a map displaying on the external view while you return to your text notes to continue teaching.

The Editor

Timelines are independent files that can be added or removed (and shared) from your device through iTunes. Each timeline resides in its own file. When you create a new timeline you are creating and independent file.

Each timeline has its own groups. You choose which events will be in each group. Since each group can be visible or hidden, try to group events according to how you intend to display data and not only according to theme. You can set the name and label colors for each group in the Group Editor.

Each group in turn contains events. The event editor allows for a lot of data entry! You can move an event to another group by touching the group name at the top and selecting the new group to move it to.

Next to the event name there is a blue detail button that allows you to select which "zone" the event will be displayed in. This is an advanced feature and setting it for each event is not necessary. However, it does allow for more specific layout when your timeline is displayed. There are fourteen zones which can be renamed in the iPad Preferences app. Seven zone are above the timeline and seven are below. This maximizes screen usage while keeping the timeline centered.

Setting the date should be quite obvious. The blue detail buttons next to the begin and end dates are, again, an optional entry. For modern times, you should fill these in if you know the information so that your timeline will be as accurate as possible. For ancient dates, our knowledge can be a little more "fuzzy" and so you can leave it out or use the seasons to give a general time. The seasons being with winter in January and continue in three month cycles through the year. You cannot enter a more specific date along with a season. If you know the exact date or even the month, the season setting is unnecessary.

Data for each event has three parts, each of which are optional. First, you can enter your own notes in the text box. The text you enter will be displayed inside a web page, so any web links you enter will be available in your timeline. This allows for creating very rich presentations with many outside links. Furthermore, any HTML markup you do (bold, tables, etc.) will also be formatted for you.

Second, you can enter an image from your iPad's photo library. If you wish to add and image of a person, map, or artifact, this is the place to store it.

Third, you can enter an URL to go directly to a website when your event is displayed. Keep in mind that the embedded browser is not intended to display massive web pages since your iPad has limited memory resources.