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MicroSims Milestones Timeline

Run the MicroSims Milestones Timeline Fullscreen

About This MicroSim

This timeline places eleven milestones of the MicroSims project in order, from the first commit of MicroSims 1.0 in November 2023 to the day the original book was tagged v1.0 and the MicroSims 2.0 rewrite began in September 2026. Each milestone belongs to one of four themes:

Date Milestone Theme
November 4, 2023 The term "MicroSim" is coined (Medium article) Book
November 21, 2023 First commit of MicroSims 1.0 Book
December 3, 2024 First commit of the intelligent-textbooks project Book
February 24, 2025 Anthropic introduces Claude Code Anthropic Announcements
March 17, 2025 First use of Claude Code Tools
October 2025 First arXiv-style paper draft (v0.02) Paper
October 16, 2025 Anthropic introduces Agent Skills Anthropic Announcements
November 2025 Paper draft v0.06 Paper
December 10, 2025 First MicroSim generator skill Tools
September 26, 2026 Skill for adding xAPI events to a MicroSim (v0.2) Tools
September 30, 2026 Tag v1.0 marks the original book; the rewrite begins Book

The spacing of the events is part of the lesson: almost a year separates the first commit of MicroSims 1.0 from the next event, most of the tooling milestones fall within 2025, and the last two milestones fall within four days of each other. Zooming in on September 2026 separates them.

Learning objective: The learner will identify the major milestones between MicroSims 1.0 and MicroSims 2.0 and order them in time.

Bloom's taxonomy level: Remember (verb: identify)

How to Use

  1. Click any milestone box to read a two-sentence description in the panel below the timeline, including its position in the sequence ("milestone 10 of 11").
  2. Drag the timeline left or right to pan.
  3. To zoom, click a milestone and press + Zoom (zooming centers on the selected milestone) or − Zoom. Fit all shows every milestone again.
  4. Use Group by to switch between one row per theme (Book, Paper, Tools, Anthropic Announcements) and a single track.
  5. When the timeline is opened on its own with the fullscreen button, the mouse wheel also zooms the time axis. Inside a textbook page the wheel scrolls the page instead.

Iframe Embed Code

You can add this MicroSim to any web page by adding this to your HTML:

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<iframe src="https://dmccreary.github.io/microsims/sims/microsims-milestones-timeline/main.html"
        height="582px"
        width="100%"
        scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan

Audience

Teachers, instructional designers, learning-technology developers and learning-analytics practitioners (college undergraduate and professional development).

Duration

10 minutes

Prerequisites

  • The MicroSims 1.0 and MicroSims 2.0 section of Chapter 1

Activities

  1. Scan (3 min): With Fit all and grouping by theme, name the theme that has the earliest milestone and the theme with the most recent one.
  2. Zoom (3 min): Click the xAPI skill milestone and zoom in until the two September 2026 events separate. Write them in order with their dates.
  3. Order from memory (4 min): Close the timeline and write the eleven milestones in order. Reopen it, switch to Single track, and check your order.

Assessment

  • The learner lists the eleven milestones in the correct chronological order.
  • The learner identifies which milestone marks the end of MicroSims 1.0 as the current book (the v1.0 tag) and which milestone introduced instrumentation (the xAPI skill).

References

  1. vis-timeline documentation - vis.js. The library used to draw, zoom and pan the timeline.
  2. Git - Wikipedia. The version control system whose tags, such as v1.0, preserve earlier versions of a project.
  3. arXiv - Wikipedia. The open preprint server whose paper format the project's research drafts follow.
  4. Experience API - Wikipedia. The xAPI standard behind the skill for adding xAPI events to a MicroSim.