For my Visualization Project, I ended up created an interactive timeline on the History of Social Media using Knight Labs. My original Inquiry blog topic was on Art and Identity: Is Identity given or created? In my last blog post, I dove into this topic and started to connect it to the topic of social media, so I wanted to create a visualization based on this subtopic.
To view my project click HERE!
As an art teacher, visualizations are typically part of a lesson. I personally loved to research all of these interactive platforms, which I will definitely put in my teacher resource book. I decided to choose the interactive timeline for this project because it seemed to be the best fit to present information on the topic of social media. I thought it was a nice way to share information dealing with dates along with adding photos and videos in a fun way! I think using this platform would engage students in a way a textbook or plain article would not. It gives them a visual of what order events happened along with time in between events. It also gives the teacher a chance to insert related videos or photos, which are always helpful in learning.
Overall, this project was helpful in giving me ideas on how to create more interesting and interactive lessons. Teaching students information definitely doesn’t have to be boring and straight from a textbook. It can be fun, personal, and creative! Being in the art education already, this is something I have thankfully learned early on. This project though has taught me that I don’t even have to show a boring basic powerpoint to introduce a lesson. There are SO many other options out there in creating a lesson to engage students and help them learn in a meaningful way.
Paige Bauske 
I love this idea! I had never heard of KnightLabs before, but I definitely like how you used it to show the timeline of social media- and how you can embed relevant videos and pictures as well. It really brought the topic to life!
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Hi Paige,
This is such an interesting topic to cover and I think it will easily engage students! In this day in age, I really can’t think of one person who doesn’t use social media in some way or another so knowing their history can be extremely useful! I think that is will also be a nice wake-up call for some students that think social media is known solely to their generation when obviously that is not the case. I also like how easy it would be to slightly shift this visualization to talk about how important it is to be safe on social media and the internet in general!
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Hi Paige–
This is an intriguing topic and I think students would relate to the idea of social media. I think using KnightLabs as you stated allow students to show their understanding through creativity and not feel that it is the same type of project they are always completing. Especially working with social media it can bring many aspects and outlooks to the forefront of teaching and students learning. I also believe the visualization of social media will bring great discussions to your class!
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Knight Labs is very innovative and always changing in how their platforms can be used. It might be interesting to have your students create timelines of their own digital footprint online, looking at how their identity is portrayed online.
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