Easy #EdTech | Create Animated GIFs as Flash Cards

Easy #EdTech | AppSmashing to Create Animated GIFs as Flash Cards

#EdTech animated GIF on Mac iPad iPhone ChromeBook or PC

Creating animated GIFs is a bit old school by today’s #EdTech standards, but can still be a fun and easy activity for students. Websites like Gifmaker.me make creating these images easy and can be done on Macs, PCs, ChromeBooks, iPhones, iPads and Droids. The finished product can be used in other projects or shared in a variety of ways including Google Classroom, email, websites, Dropbox, and/or Google Drive.

An animated GIF is really a series of images that are packaged together. The GIF switches between the images to give the illusion of movement or change similar to a flip book or stop motion animation.

In a word processing or presentation software of your choice (Pages, Keynote, Word, PowerPoint, etc.) create a basic shape. For this example Pages on the Mac was used.

Insert an image or a text box over or inside of the shape based on the information you want to study. In this case, characters from Shakespeare’s King Lear are used. Take a screen shot of the shape with the image or text. You will use these screen shots to make the GIF. Change the images or text information and keep taking screen shots accordingly until you have all the images you need for your review.

The images can just as easily be taken using a phone or created using applications like Skitch. The nice thing is that students can use what is readily available to them.

The background colors of the shapes were changed to coordinate with each character and their role in the play. All the images were gather together and organized to make uploading easier.

GIFMaker.me is one of many sites on the web to create animated GIFs. It is free and easy to use.

Upload your images in the order you want them to appear. You can upload them as a group or individually.

Adjust the size of the finished product using the slider for Canvas Size.

Adjust the rate at which the images change using the slider for Animation Speed. Playing with this will give you an intuitive feel for how fast you want the results. 2 seconds seems to be a good interval.

Select the format for your project. For an animated GIF, click the “Create GIF Animation” button. The nice thing about this site is that it gives you a variety of options for your finished product including frame animation, GIFs or video. You can even merge or combine different animated GIFs into one project.

Once the image has been generated, the following options will appear. Click on “Download this GIF” to download the finished product.

This activity is really versatile. Basically anything in the camera roll or that can be photographed or created into an image is fair game for this activity. It lends itself very well to AppSmashing for that reason. Finished GIFs can then be used in an ePortfolio or Google Site, or turned in via email, AirDrop, Google Classroom, DropBox, Edmoto, etc. depending on what you already have available to use with your students.