I’m very glad to see that you all have the ball rolling on your project and have started to do some spadework to identify what sorts of events you will put on your timeline.
Since it sounds like you all found the tutorial pretty straightforward and don’t foresee computer problems, the real challenge is going to be deciding what to put on the time line. All of you have already noted that this is the real work for your group, but so far there have been several different criteria proposed for deciding what gets on and what gets left off: (a) appealing to a young audience; (b) appealing to an audience that already knows a lot about the battle; (c) making sure small things that usually get forgotten are included; (d) connecting local events with national events. And perhaps even more might be mentioned. These may not be mutually exclusive criteria, but sometimes they may not fit together well. Above all, the problem with running with several different criteria of what gets on could result in a timeline that becomes a jumble of dates that appear arbitrarily selected to the viewer–the sort of timeline that critics of timelines love to denounce as just a bunch of facts.
Ideally, your timeline will interpret and communicate something about the events on it simply by virtue of what sorts of events you select. The inclusion of a single date can sometimes dramatically change the way people look at another date. Consider, for example, a timeline that only has dates about the Battle of Sabine Pass on it, and then compare that in your mind with a timeline that includes the effective date of the Emancipation Proclamation and shows that this was before the battle. How different would the impression left by the second timeline be? That’s just an example–but the point is that as you have your discussions about what to include, it’s good to consider who your audience is and, even more importantly, what you want to tell them. It sounds like you’re already doing this somewhat, and once you get some rough answers fixed in your mind, it will be easier to decide what to leave off–not because it’s uninteresting, but because it doesn’t contribute to your primary objectives for the timeline.