Cool Tool | Hstry


This digital learning tool that enables teachers, students and historians to create and explore interactive historical timelines. Using a platform designed to mimic social media, “Hstry” presents history in a format that is easily understood, engaging, and familiar to the 21st century student.

 Hstry’s timelines include not only text and images, but also video, audio, and quiz questions. Furthermore, students can comment, discuss, and ask questions directly on the timeline itself, both deepening their understanding through interaction with other students and further engaging them in their study of history.

 Teachers have the possibility of either using Hstry’s own timelines which follow the common core, or create their own and share them with their classroom or the community. Students can also create their timelines making history not some vague and passive event in the past, but something alive with which they can engage. The use of the first person perspective, where the student puts her/himself in the shoes of a famous historical character, is a good example of this. As the platform is accessible from any device connected to the web, this can be something the students work on at home. Hstry therefore becomes a useful assessment tool for the teacher.