An Interactive Touchscreen Timeline at the Anglo-American School Engages Students and Parents

Andrew Beelitz November 15, 2019

This example shows how interactive infographics on large touch screens can be used to create engaging exhibitions in a physical space.

The Anglo-American School of Moscow (AASM) is an independent, international school catering for students between the ages of 4 and 18, chartered by the American, British and Canadian embassies. As their communication and development department started preparing for the school’s 70 year anniversary, graphic designer and public relations coordinator Anastasia Osminina started looking for interactive touch screen solutions for their exhibition.

“We researched online, and ThingLink came up as a viable option with a simple interface and a short learning curve.”

Image: A student exploring the digital timeline at The Anglo-American School of Moscow. Photo credit: AASM

A digital timeline

The main hallway of the AASM features a timeline that tells about the history of the school from 1949 to 2009. For the anniversary celebration, the idea was to replace the old timeline with a digital version that lets students interact with the timeline by clicking on various pieces of additional information embedded in the infographics.

Image: Students exploring the digital timeline at The Anglo-American School of Moscow. Photo credit: AASM

Explore the digital timeline by clicking on the penguin icons below:

The digital timeline consists of multiple infographics that are published both on the school website and in the main hallway using 40-inch vertical screens.

Engaging students to document the school’s history

What comes next? “We are going to challenge students to document the last 10 years of history digitally using ThingLink. Going forward,  students can create a new page to our timeline every new school year, ” says Lyubov Bordaeva from the AAS communications team.

Summary and results

This project is a great example of how interactive visuals on large touch screens can help turn a physical space into a place for exploration and learning. The feedback for the timeline project was overwhelmingly positive:

• Visitors, alumni, parents and students were able to interact and learn about the school’s history in a new, deeper way
• Students said that the interactive screen allowed them to learn new facts about the school and its history overall
• Empowering students to author pages in the history timeline drove engagement, interest and learning

Interested in creating your own interactive timeline?

Read out blog below where we set out the process for creating a timeline with Canva and ThingLink!

Create interactive timelines for students

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