For a number of years now I've long wondered if we could use digital tools that handled events and dating in the history classroom to help teach both historical methodology and construct a course's basic historical narrative. Last fall I grabbed the bull by the horns and did just that: crowd-sourced a timeline for my 170-student History 214 'Introduction to European History' here at McGill. It was an interesting experience - from ramping up a prototype web-app, to managing the classroom, to the overall reactions of students to a novel way of thinking through history as a collective endeavour. In the end the tool allowed for a different approach to teaching the fundamentals of historical sch
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