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Excerpt

This guide walks you through making a dynamic timeline in Mandala Visuals. We'll show you how to set up your spreadsheet, then use that data in Visuals. Then, you'll use customization settings to make your timeline look the way you want.  The final timeline will look something like this:

To create a timeline: 

  1. Create a Google Spreadsheet

  2. Enter your data 

  3. Format your spreadsheet 
  4. Log in to Visuals 
  5. Connect your Google Drive to Visuals 
  6. Create a new visualization
  7. Invite student contributions in class

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1. Create a Google Spreadsheet

Visuals pulls data from your Google account to make visualizations. To start making a timeline, put your data into Google Sheets. 

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 Now you're ready to enter your data.

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2. Enter your data

At this point, you should pull up our Timeline guide for quick reference. This tells you how to format your data so Visuals can read it. In general, you'll use individual chart guides in our Visualization Index to find out about formatting.

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 Enter all required labels at on the top row of the spreadsheet. These are:

  • title
  • description
  • startdate
  • enddate
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Now, fill in your data for each cell.

We've entered four events in the example to the left. This data was taken from the Thomas Jefferson Foundation's website.

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You'll

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leave the rows themselves blank. In class, each student will add a row to the spreadsheet, creating a single event. Before they can do that, however, you should make sure rows are formatted correctly. 


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3. Format your spreadsheet

If you pull up our Timeline reference guide, you'll see that the first row you filled out contains data labels. We need to “freeze” this row. "Freezing" helps Audio-Video read the data you entered.

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To set the data type, select your column. Click Format from the menu, then Number. Choose Plain Text. Do this for each column.

Now your data spreadsheet is ready to go, and for student contributions. Next, you can move to Mandala Audio-Video to set up the basic visualization before class begins.

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4. Log in to visuals

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Click on the Main Menu icon () in the top right corner. Then, Log in via Netbadge.

Enter your Netbadge credentials to finish logging in. Now we'll make your visualization.

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6. Create your timeline 

From the Visuals homepage, Create a visualization. 

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To finish making your timeline, give the visualization a title in the "Title" field at the top of the page, then choose Public under the "Visibility" options at the bottom of the page.  

Save your visualization. You're all ready for your class to create a collaborative timeline together. 

7. Invite student contributions in class

 

 

Now you're finished with your project. To learn more about making visualizations, you can use this Visuals in Mandala guide.