Personal Note: Timelines

   I've been fiddling around with a new timeline recently.

   One of the first things I did when I started working here was to make a timeline of when schools opened up.
 

Small sampling of the timeline (and current future school plans)

   It's a great visual aid, especially seeing the school system's growth. Beside it is a timeline chronicling the many renovations over the year. It works fine and dandy, but only for current schools that are still open. It can show if a school is currently a support facility (grey background) or not apart of the school system (no color background), but it doesn't show when a school closes. How do I catalog that?

   The next step was to make a stat chart for schools. I had tabs for when schools opened, closed, original square footage, important history moments, etc. Both the timeline and stat chart work well together, but I still wanted something visual to communicate what the stat chart stated. I needed one place, a "consolidation of schools" of sorts.

   So, you could call this new one Timeline 2.0. It's official name is "Fun Timeline," because I made it for fun, but I think it'll be helpful too.

A sampling of the left side of the chart

   In this one timeline, each school has its own small timeline where I can jot down notes on its history. The colored parts indicate when they were in operation as a school. When the color ends, the school has closed. Their timeline of events still continues on, unless they burned down (like that one school in blue that was only open two years) or were demolished.

   You can highlight a year and scroll across to see how many schools were open that year (right now, my graph is correct up to the 1961-1962 school year!). It would probably give you a headache if you scrolled across it too fast, but I digress.

   The old timeline is still helpful. It's quick to look up. It's also easier to print out (If I've learned one thing about working in an office, it's that Excel is a pain to print out)

   2.0 is still a work in progress. I only realized today I didn't have the old Waterford School on there. Many renovations and important points in time are still missing. It'll get up to par with the other lists soon.