Welcome to a new episode of Tech Tuesday! This week I’m returning to a recent topic.
In the last episode, I showed you Brush Ninja, an animated gif tool. But did you know there are lots of other ways to make animated gif’s? Inspired by a blog post from Free Technology for Teachers, I’ll show you some other tools and ways you can use them! Also, I have some big news on how you can use Tech Tuesday for PD points which I’ll share in Tech News. But for now, let’s jump into 10 Ways to Make Animated GIFs!
Now before I start with #1, let’s review why using and creating animated gifs can be a good activity. It can be a fun and engaging way to connect with students during a warm-up, be added to a Google Slides show to help make a point or teach a lesson. It can allow students to show how concepts and processes work or present information in a quick way.
GIFs can also be used to explain vocabulary terms, solve math problems, or retell the plot of a story. You could add a GIF to a Google Forms quiz or Canvas quiz and have students explain what is happening in the clip. There are lots of great ideas! So let’s jump into our list!
#1 – Gifmaker.me
This way combines old school and new school. Students can either draw pictures showing the steps in a process, then take a photo of their pictures and upload them to Gifmaker.me which will then animate the pictures, as you see in this example from KQED Education. Or skip the drawing step, take your own pictures or find copyright-free pictures to upload and animate.
#2 – Ezgif
Create animated GIFs with text. This tool allows you to write your text over an animated GIF image without losing the animation. You can also add subtitles or annotations to the whole clip or change the text on different frames of the GIF.
While this free website has tools for grades K-5, its animation tool works for just about any grade level. Here’s a Science example created by Pinky’s Ed Tech Tips that illustrates how a peptide bond works. I also found a great tutorial that shows how to use the tool. Pinky’s site also has a collection of GIFs already created by Pinky and her sister Petunia that you or students can use for educational purposes.
#4 – Create claim and counterclaim writing exercises
There’s a teacher, whose name I would try to pronounce, but I’ll just butcher it, so I’ll leave the link to his blog post explaining this lesson instead. In this lesson, he has students take or find photos to create GIFs that look like they are in an epic battle and he has them include their arguments in the visuals. He calls it “Fight Club: A Battle for Ideas” and it’s a pretty interesting idea.
#5 – Giphy
In the Fight Club lesson, students can use this site to find or create their own GIFs for this assignment. However, one word of caution as students may come across inappropriate material on this site. This might be a good time to talk about Digital Citizenship with your students and what responsible online behavior is and what to do if they see something inappropriate. Remember, our students could run into something inappropriate doing a simple Google search, so I wouldn’t completely write this site off the list. Instead, let’s help our students make smart choices.
#6 – Flip Anim
This is a very easy tool to use and create animated GIFs. You can also browse their gallery of GIFs using the tools at the top of the page. They also just released a new beta version editor that has more features than the original.
#7 – Docs365 GIFmaker Google Slides add-on
This will turn a series of Google Slides into animated GIFs. I love this feature because its able to be used in one of my favorite tools and in just a few easy steps. Add the pictures you want to each slide, turn on the add-on and hit generate GIFs. It’s that easy!
#8 – Parapara Animation
If you have students that like to draw, this tool is for you! It’s easy to use and it does not require registration to use it.
Richard Byrne of Free Technology for Teachers has video tutorials for Flip Anim, the Docs265 add-on, and Parapara on his site.
#9 – GIFs4Kids
This is a project by Go Rogue EDU to provide a safe zone for students and teachers to access appropriate GIF images. Use the search box on their site or choose to browse all available GIFs. The site is also searchable in 24 different languages. They also want to build a repository of student-created GIFs so if your students create their own, have them use the submission form to submit their GIF.
#10 – #GIFVocab
Use this hashtag to explore GIFs matched up with vocabulary words on the Internet or Twitter. This way students could use GIFs that represent synonyms and antonyms or create a collection of to represent adjectives as a fun way to engage a parts of speech activity or report traits and feelings of characters in stories, or for ESOL students create a flipbook or database of words for a new unit.
Now, Animated GIFs aren’t just for students to create either. I see them on Twitter from other teachers and edtech gurus I follow all the time. Jake Miller, @JakeMillerTech shares tons of tech tips using animated gifs he creates expressly to show teachers the steps in a quick way. I learn something new every time I open my Twitter feed! You can create your own GIFs to show students directions, your own tips, and more and add to activities, warm-ups, quizzes, and notes.
I’m also sharing an article I found on how teachers use social media. In the article, the writer asked teachers on Twitter to share the ways they use animated GIFs in their classes.
I’m really excited to see how you use animated GIFs in your classroom. Please share with me @mspriester_itrt.
TECH NEWS
So, here’s the big PD news for all MPCS folks! Including this episode, there are 5 episodes of Tech Tuesday left this school year. So, if you watch all 5 episodes AND come up with a lesson plan from ONE of these episodes you’ll get 5 PD points. But here’s what you need to do to make sure you get your points:
- Submit this form telling me what you learned in each episode and add the file with your lesson plan.
- Register for the PD Session called “Tech Tuesday PD series” in Teachpoint.
You MUST do BOTH steps in order to get your points. The form will be available until June 14, 2019.
The Shake Up Learning Show is a new podcast from one of my favorite edtech gurus, Kasey Bell. The show premieres TODAY and she is dropping the first 5 episodes for you to binge on. I got a sneak peek at the podcast last week and I’ve got to tell you she doesn’t hold back in these episodes and packs them full of ideas for integrating technology in a purposeful way.
You can check out my blog post at Teaching in a Beta State to read my full review. The link will be down below, but I encourage you to go check out Kasey’s podcast, The Shake Up Learning Show, which you can access at itunes or any way you listen to podcasts.
Before I sign off, I’m asking for a favor. I would like to do a special episode for the last episode of the season featuring all of you! I want to hear about your favorite technology projects that you’ve done in your classrooms this year. I can film you or you can film yourself and send me your video.
DM me on Twitter for contact info.
That’s all for this week’s episode! Thanks for watching! I’ll see you in two weeks!
Ms Priester EDU 