Dipity.com Dipity Blog

Last week we celebrated two more Dipsters, RRTN and David Widgington and their fabulous applications of our timeline platform. RRTN looked at the history of African Americans at MIT as well as major accomplishments in science, architecture and innovation. David looked at a current humanitarian and political issue, the South Sudan Independence Referendum.

Both methods of using Dipity explore key information that helps connect, inform and build community around important issues. This week, we look at another hot button issue, immigration.

1. Deportation Nation: A Timeline of Immigration Criminalization

Description: The United States is not just a nation of immigrants, it is also a nation of deportation. This timeline shows how the U.S. immigration system became focused on enforcement and criminalization.

Timespan: December 2, 1783 - Present

Deportation Nation doubled up on their Dipity-ing with a Flipbook embed on their home page and a timeline embed here.

The Deportation Nation site is very sleek and well-designed and the staff there has managed to incorporate Dipity seamlessly. The two different view modes showcase the strength of the timeline, both in the extent of the detail as well as the interesting and relevant photos they added to events.

A dense topic like immigration in the United States is tough to approach without understanding the basic history and context. Given that there are so many sides to this one issue, it is important to educate readers about how we arrived at the current juncture, and where we are going from here.

A chronological history is the perfect tool to help do so, and Deportation Nation did an excellent job maximizing Dipity’s history-telling capabilities. This timeline gives viewers all they need to know by presenting, with a high level of detail, the history of US policy on immigration.

Understanding the historical facts and trends of US policy just might help someone change their personal stance on the issue. If not, at the very least, they leave the website better informed on how and why community’s besides their own are affected by immigration law.

The Deportation Nation timeline is a great example of history in context and action. The embeds look great and the timeline itself is very informative. Great job and thank you for sharing!

2. The Education Technology Consortium of Northern Arizona University

Description: Tracks the Twitter and Blog updates of the ETC at NAU to build and inform the ETC community of the latest news, developments and accomplishments.

Timespan: March 27, 2009 - Present

While not the most visually appealing use of Dipity, this application shows how Dipsters engage technology in an attempt to reach out to their users. Serving as the header for their community blog, the timeline aggregates all the tweets and posts via RSS feed to update, in real-time, every bit of information the ETC sends out to their students, teachers and whoever else may be following along.

This is an excellent way to give the community a central starting point, and a great way to show technology at work. Dipity is becoming a popular educational technology tool, and the ETC is showing just one more way you can use timelines in education and elsewhere.

I use my personal timeline to track my Dipity blogs and Tweets, but had never thought to embed the timeline as a header. When the ETC blog first popped up on our radar, I slapped my forehead, wondering how I hadn’t thought of this before. As I have said in the past, users constantly surprise us with their ability to apply Dipity in new and innovative ways. If you can think of one, or have one to show us, please do share.

Thank you to both ETC and Deportation Nation for sharing their amazing timelines with us.

Join us in the new year for a look at 2 more amazing Dipsters.

Happy Holidays and Happy Dipitying!