Timelines.com and Information Literacy

Timelines.com may be useful for homeschoolers but not as a source of accurate historical information.

Creating timelines is popular among some homeschoolers, followers of the Well-Trained Mind in particular. This website does not include timelines as most people conceive them: A long line noting important dates and events as history unfolds. Instead, the website highlights specific dates in history and organizes them by category such as assassinations, great sports moments, or battles in the American Civil War. The home page focuses on "This Week in History". This is the week of June 14, 2010. Important events include

• June, 14, 1777, the Continental Congress Approves the First American Flag
• June 14, 1967, Thurgood Marshall is the first African-American appointed to the Supreme Court, and
  
• June 15, 1804 the 12th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified.

However, some not so important and possibly profit-driven events are included. Today's headline event, for instance, is the founding of Pizza Hut on June 15, 1958.

The Importance of Information Literacy!
Users need to beware: Some of the information on timelines.com may not be accurate! As a school librarian in training, I always caution students that they need to carefully evaluate sources of information for authority, accuracy, and credibility, especially information they find on the Web. So many people, not just students, assume that everything and anything on the Web is fact, but we need to use good judgement. Anyone, anywhere with access to the Internet can post any information, true or false. Just because we find it on the Web does not mean its true.

Timelines.com is a socially-constructed website. Information is posted by individuals who register for accounts. These individuals may or may not be scholars or experts. Most likely, they are not. Take a look at this page: http://timelines.com/1074/battle-of-anatolia about a battle fought in the Crusades. The information is posted by Aimee Lucido and her information source is Wikipedia. Who is Aimee Lucido? Beats me. I've never heard of her, but here's her timelines.com profile: http://timelines.com/profiles/hadrad1000. We still don't know anything about her, but note some of her other contributions to timelines.com-- entries about popstar Justin Bieber and actress Dakota Fanning. Is Ms. Lucido a historian who specializes in Medieval history and popular culture? I guess its possible, but I doubt it. (I found a facebook account for an Aimee Lucido, student at Brown University). As for her information source... Ms. Lucido has lifted her decription of the Battle of Anatolia almost word for word from this Wikipedia article: First Crusade (scroll down the page to the third paragraph under the heading Situation in Europe.

Putting the problem with plagiarism aside, I hope that all of you know by now that Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. Like timelines.com, it is created by users who may or may not have expertise, can submit any information without substantiation or citations, and can alter and edit others' contributions. Only use information from Wikipedia if you can back it up with other, more authoritative sources (such as a standard encyclopedia article).

So What's the Bottomline?
While I would not use timelines.com to obtain historical information, I would use it to construct some excellent learning experiences about information literacy, knowledge construction, and participationin online communities. Try out these ideas:

• Have the student choose a timelines.com event and research it for accuracy, authority and credibility. You will be teaching your student important evaluative skills in very meaningful way.
• After studying an historical event, have your student create and submit an original entry citing reliable, authoritative sources of information and using good grammar and composition.
• Have your students use timelines.com to find news events that occurred on their birthday. See if they can find other sources of information (newspaper archives, microfilm or microfiche at your local public or college library, encyclopedias and almanacs, other online sources) to corroborate these stories.