Dipity is a social timeline application that enables users to construct visual timelines with events, photos, audio and video. Dipity timelines can be created to represent any historic information and are formulated either by entering items manually or by adding a feed. The service currently supports the ability to import from Picasa, Twitter, Pandora, Wordpress.com, Last.fm, Flickr, Yelp, Blogger, YouTube, and any other supplied RSS Feed.

After you’ve entered the data for your timeline, Dipity quickly generates a visual timeline. The timeline allows multiple zoom levels by length of time displayed. You can then scroll horizontally across your timeline and click on individual items within it. Once an item is selected, it will display details and images if available as well as links for the source data if pulled in from a feed.

Dipity also offers three methods to view the timeline data. List view is a more traditional chronological view; Flipbook view is a coverflow method; and Map View offers a world map view if the items are geo tagged.

In terms of teaching and learning, the site might be used by students and teachers to create and share interactive timelines about any subject or topic. With Dipity, students might be given the opportunity to bring history to life by embedding relevant YouTube videos or images into their timelines. Teachers might create a timeline of the day by combining Dipity with classroom tweets from Twitter. Timelines can be created by students individually or as a class and posted on a class website as a study resource.

Here are a couple of great examples: The History of Russia and Eurasian Republics, The Major Events of World War Two, and a History of ACU on YouTube from our own Kyle Dickson.