Whenever I see a new timeline creation tool appear on the Internet, I can’t resist giving it a try. So when eStory appeared on Product Hunt a few days ago, I had to sign-up and test it out. 

eStory is a free tool that you can use to quickly create multimedia timelines. There are some great aspects of it and a few that I’d like to see improved. eStory timelines are image and text based. At this time there doesn’t appear to be a way to include videos in the timeline. That’s a limiting aspect of eStory, but it also makes the creation process quicker. eStory includes an integrated image search tool which makes it quick and easy to find images to use in your timelines. However, it doesn’t appear to give image attribution or even a link to the image source. That’s a problem that needs to be addressed. 

To create a timeline on eStory you’ll have to create an account using your email address or by connecting your Google account. After that step you’ll give your timeline a title and choose a cover image for your timeline. Then you can add some recommended readings to your timeline before starting to create events on your timeline. Each event on your timeline is created by adding a date, an event title, an event description, and an event cover image. Event descriptions are limited to 280 characters. When you’ve added all of your events you can publish your timeline publicly or keep it private. Publishing options include sharing a direct URL for your timeline or using the provided embed code to post your timeline in a web page. 

Applications for Education
eStory has a couple of issues that I’d like to see addressed before I’ll fully recommend it for classroom use. Those are the lack of image attribution and the lack of support for video. If those items are addressed, eStory could be a good tool for students to use to make multimedia timelines.