Elements is an open-source toolkit that helps journalists create interactive quizzes and timelines — no technical know-how required.

The iFrames are designed to be mobile-first, fully responsive on different devices, and fast-loading even with low bandwidth connections. Unlike most embeddable tools that don’t benefit a story’s SEO, content created with Elements is SEO friendly, meaning that the text can be fully crawled by search engines, which helps publishers using the tools increase their web traffic.

Elements includes two tools: toTimeline and toQuiz.

• toTimeline depicts events chronologically with visuals. It works best for telling stories that have evolved over a period of time, such as recapping politicians' votes on a specific issue or showing an increase of crime in a region. toTimeline offers a vertical layout as opposed to the more traditional horizontal timeline structure.

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  toQuiz allows newsrooms to introduce basic gamification to a story and create more online engagement around a topic. It can also be used for creating weekly news wrap-ups that help newsrooms highlight important or interesting content for readers. Users can set up timed and untimed quizzes, with or without scores.

Reach out to Sara Olstad (solstad@icfj.org) if you are interested in accessing this tool.