Our school district technology curriculum requires spreadsheet to be introduced to Grade 3 students. Students in this grade also have to create a timeline. We think that the perfect way to combine these is to use spreadsheet for making a timeline! Mrs. Murphy, Grade 3 teacher and I piloted this for our school last year and found - to our mutual surprise - that third grade students take to spreadsheets like ducklings to water! Teachers may be nervous about typing in "boxes," but the students certainly aren't! This goes for students of all abilities, too. The spreadsheets that we have on display took only 1 1/2 periods of computer lab to complete.

We had hoped to have the students do timelines of famous Native Americans, but unfortunately we found a lack of material which included dates and events necessary to do timelines. We have several products here, but most students in the class did timelines on their own lives, which, of course are not published with our Native American web site!

If you'd like to see additional samples of spreadsheet timelines, please look at the products produced by Mrs. Murphy's class last year. That class did timelines on famous people, and to see their work, please click Mrs. Murphy's Biographical Timelines.

Below you will find a step is a step by step procedure for teacher assisted timelines, done in Microsoft Excel, in Office 97. While Excel has a feature to convert spreadsheets to html files (web pages), these files lose the look of timelines during that process. To publish on the web, we scan in printed copies.

The Procedure:

Prerequisite: Student must have a sloppy copy of his or her timeline complete.

Step 1. Instructor prepares a new spreadsheet by formatting two rows as follows. Instructor selects two rows (I chose rows 7 and 8) by clicking on the two row numbers. The entire rows will then be selected with black highlight as shown in Figure 1. Next click "Format" in the Menu bar, then "Cells" in the Format menu. A dialog box will pop up as shown in Figure 2. Select Alignment, then center the text horizontally and vertically using the drop down lists. Finally set the text to wrap and click "ok".	Figure 1
Step 2. The student types the events. The student is instructed to type the events in the cells according to a pattern: first event in cell 7a, the second in cell 8c, 7e, 8g and so on. This will give the events a staggered look with nice spacing. The instructor will manually adjust the margins of the columns as necessary by dragging mouse on the right side of the column letter. This may be needed if words are wrapped incorrectly, or the text is too long and skinny. Another adjustment the instructor may need to do is resetting the row height. This is done easily by selecting the number of the row, clicking "Format", putting the mouse over the word "row" to engage the popup menu, and clicking "Autofit."	Figure 2
Step 3. The student types the years. In row 3 the years that go with the events are typed. For example, the year that goes with the event in cell 7a will be typed in cell 3a. The year corresponding to the event in cell 8c will be typed in cell 3c, and so on. Step 4. The student boxes in the cells that contain typing. At this point, the instructor clicks the mouse on the first cell containing an event. Then the instructor clicks the arrow next to the "Borders" icon to activate the drop down list. See Figure 3. The "Borders" icon is located on the formatting tool bar almost all the way to the right. When the drop down menu is visible, as shown in Figure 3, the dark solid black box is clicked. This will set the border type as a dark black box. At this point, the student is instructed to click each cell containing an event or year, and then click the "Borders" icon to give the text a black box around it.	Figure 3

Step 5. The student connects the year and event with a thin line. Instructor clicks the cell below the first year. Then the instructor sets the "Borders" icon back to a thin vertical line on the right side by using the same process as described in step 4. The instructor again clicks the mouse in the cell below the first year, holds the mouse clicker down and drags it to the cell above the event. All cells between the year and the event will be highlighted in black. (The cell below the year will be a different highlight because this cell is the one containing the cursor.) Then the instructor clicks the "Borders" icon, and a thin line will connect the year and the event. The student is to continue dragging the mouse from the cell below the year to the cell above the event, and then to click the "Borders" icon.

Step 6. The instructor inserts blank rows to give the timeline space. At this point, the text and years are in rows 3, 7 and 8. This allows all the typing to be contained in the visible screen, but does not give enough space for a title, or a nice thick line in the middle. Instructor clicks anywhere in row 5, clicks "Insert" on the menu bar, then clicks "Rows". This is repeated 4 times. The events will be moved down to rows 11 and 12 at this point, and the vertical lines will be automatically added where necessary.

Step 7. The instructor adds the dark timeline. The instructor will click the cell in the column which is half way between the year and the top event row. (In our example, it is row 7.) The instructor will drag the mouse to the right as far as the last column containing a year and event. The instructor will click "Format" on the menu bar, then click "cells." A dialog box shown in Figure 2 will appear. Click "Pattern," and then have the student pick his or her favorite color. Then click "ok" and a thick line with the selected color will appear. This will create the timeline.

Step 8. The instructor centers the timeline. Instructor will click anywhere in row 1, click "Insert" on the menu bar, then click "Rows". This is repeated 4 or 5 times. To see how the page looks, click "File", "Print Preview." If the timeline is not nicely centered, close the print preview screen by clicking "Close", then add or delete rows as necessary. ("Edit", "Delete", "Entire Row.")

Step 9. Student adds title and name. Student is instructed to click in a nicely centered position above the timeline (cell d3, for example) to type the title. Student presses return, then clicks back on the cell containing the title and is invited to use the format bar to change the font size from "10" to something larger. Then student does the same somewhere below the timeline with his or her own name.

Step 10. Page numbering. If desired, the instructor can add page numbering. Click "File," "Page Setup," "Header/Footer," click the list icon for "Footer" and select the desired page numbering format.

Step 11. Save and print. When saving, I have students use a two part file name. They type the project and their name. In this case, all file names are "Timeline Student Name". If more than one class is doing a project on the same computer, it is advised to create folders corresponding to grade level and teacher.

Step 12. Scan and put on the school web page. Students can be instructed to scan their own timelines for use on a school web page. Our web page for this project is http://www.pwcs.edu/pattie/projects/murphy/timeline.html .

Extras. Microsoft Excel 97 offers the ability to add creative features we chose not use. A list of these are:

• Graphics may be downloaded from the Internet and inserted into the spreadsheet
• All lines and text may be colored; custom fonts may be used
• The big thick timeline bar may be patterned or multicolored
• The title can be done with word art and given a 3-d effect
• Any type of multimedia object may be added, for example, music, another type of sound, video or the student's actual voice recording