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Timelines and Flash Cards are two of ChimeEdu’s self-paced study tools. Timelines help you understand the sequence of events — not just the events themselves, but why order matters. Flash Cards build vocabulary and recall through science-backed spaced repetition, so the things you study actually stick.

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Timelines

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What is a timeline activity?

A timeline activity presents a chronological sequence of events put together by your teacher. Each event has a title, a date, and usually a description and images too. You can explore the events at your own pace — scrolling forward and back through time, zooming in on a particular period, and tapping any event for the full details. Timelines are used across many subjects: history, literature, science, biography — anywhere that sequence and causation matter. Not every timeline looks the same — your teacher picks one of three types:
  • Chronological — events are points in time, in date order. Some go far beyond ordinary dates: you might see years like 44 BCE, or labels like 541 MYA (millions of years ago) on geology and space timelines.
  • Date Range — events are whole periods (like the Jurassic, or the Renaissance), and each card’s length on the line shows how long the period lasted.
  • Manual — events appear in exactly the order your teacher arranged them, like chapters in a story. There may be no dates at all.
You explore all three the same way — scroll, zoom, and tap events for the details.

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Using a timeline

1

Open the Timeline activity from your classroom

Find the Timeline activity in your classroom feed and click or tap to open it.
2

Scroll or scrub through events

Use your scroll wheel, swipe gesture, or the scrubber bar to move forward and backward through time. Events are displayed in chronological order automatically.
3

Tap any event card for full details

Click or tap on an event to expand its full card — you’ll see the title, date, description, and any images your teacher has added.
4

Zoom into a time period

Use the zoom controls to focus on a specific stretch of time — useful when events are clustered close together and you want to see them more clearly.
If your teacher is presenting the timeline to the whole class, it may be in play mode — events will advance automatically in sequence. This is great for following along during a lesson.

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Flash Cards

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What are flash cards?

Flash Cards are review decks your teacher builds for your class. Each card has a term or question on the front and an answer on the back. What makes ChimeEdu Flash Cards special is spaced repetition — the deck tracks which cards you find difficult and shows those ones more often, while cards you know well appear less frequently. This means every study session is personalized to what you actually need to practice. There are three study modes to choose from:

Flip

Read the front of the card, recall your answer, then flip it to check. Say whether you knew it, and the deck schedules your next review accordingly.

Type the Answer

Type your answer before flipping the card. Great for practicing exact spelling or definitions.

Multiple Choice

Choose the correct answer from four options. A helpful guided mode for when you’re getting started with a new topic.

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Studying with flash cards

1

Open the Flash Cards activity from your classroom

Find the Flash Cards activity in your classroom feed and click or tap to open it.
2

Choose a study mode

Select Flip, Type the Answer, or Multiple Choice depending on how you want to study. You can switch modes between sessions.
3

Work through the deck (Flip mode)

Read the term on the front of the card. Think of your answer before flipping — trying to recall it yourself is what makes it stick. Then flip the card to see the answer.
4

Rate how well you knew it

After flipping, say whether you knew it. It’s a straight choice — Know It or Still Learning — not a sliding scale, and it decides whether the card comes back soon or later.
5

Keep going — the deck adapts to you

Cards you find difficult will come back sooner. Cards you’ve mastered will appear less often. The more you study, the more personalized your sessions become.

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Progress tracking

ChimeEdu tracks your progress for you as you study. Behind the scenes each card moves between four states — New, Learning, Reviewing, and Mastered — which decide how soon it comes back. There isn’t a deck overview screen showing these counts; you’ll notice the effect while studying, as cards you know well appear less often and ones you find hard keep returning.
Your progress is saved automatically across all your devices. Start studying on your phone, continue on your laptop — everything syncs without any extra steps.
Study a little each day rather than all at once. Spaced repetition works best with regular short sessions — even ten minutes a day is more effective than one long cram the night before a test.