A Guide to Creating Explanatory Animated GIFs

In yesterday's episode of Practical Ed Tech Live I answered this question:

Is there anything that pieces the snapshots back together in a single frame? So you see the same object in one picture at different positions?

My suggestion was to create an animated GIF by following the guide that Common Craft published a couple of years ago. In Common Craft's How to Create ExplainerGIFs you will learn how to create animated GIFs using software that you probably have already. Through the guide you'll learn how to publish and share your explanatory GIFs. If you need images to use in your GIFs, How to Create ExplainerGIFs has a section devoted to finding images appropriate for crafting explanations.

Applications for Education
Having students create an animated GIF to explain a concept could be a good way to get them to think about how the individual parts of a concept come together to form one cohesive process.

The examples section of How to Create ExplainerGIFs are a good source of ideas for using animated GIFs in school. In the examples you will see animated GIFs used to bring graphs to life, a GIF used to explain how a sewing machine works, and a GIF to illustrate a soccer rule.

The Week In Review - The Most Popular Posts

Good morning from Maine where the sun is shining and I'm ready for a bike ride with some old friends that I haven't seen in about twelve years. Even if I wasn't riding with friends, it would still be a great day to get outside for fun exercise. In my life there is an amazing correlation between the amount of time I spend exercising and my mood and general productivity. In short, when I exercise I feel better and I teach better.

Wherever you are this weekend, I hope that you get some time to do something fun outside too.

Here are this week's most popular posts:
1. A Calendar of G Suite Updates
2. A Good Tool for Quickly Creating Comics
3. An Interactive Display of the Declaration of Independence
4. How to Use Unio to Deliver Lessons to Students' Screens
5. A Random Name Picker for Your Classroom
6. How to Add Images to Google Slides
7. How to Find Google Docs Published by Others

Individual and group registration is still open for the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp and the BYOD Camp. Register with a group and get a great discount!

Two online courses starting next week:

• Teaching History With Technology is a three week course for middle school and high school social studies teachers. 
• Practical Ed Tech Jumpstart is the course for anyone who has looked at the educational technology landscape and wondered, "where do I start?" 

Please visit the official advertisers that help keep this blog going.

Practical Ed Tech is the brand through which I offer PD webinars.

Storyboard That is my go-to tool for creating storyboards.

QuickKey saves teachers tons of time when scoring formative assessments.

University of Maryland Baltimore County offers a great program on instructional design.

Discovery Education & Wilkes University offer online courses for earning Master's degrees in Instructional Media.

PrepFactory offers a great place for students to prepare for SAT and ACT tests.

Boise State University offers a 100% online program in educational technology.

My Simpleshow provides a great way to create explanatory videos.

Practical Ed Tech Live - Episode #11

This afternoon my daughter and I recorded the eleventh episode of my almost weekly series, Practical Ed Tech Live. In every episode I answer a handful of the questions that I've received from readers. The recording of the episode is embedded below.


The list of questions and my recommended resources can be found in this Google Document.

More Than 8,500 People Get Their Ed Tech Tips This Way

My virtual mentor, Chris Brogan, says that watching and listening is the new reading. He's been saying this for a while which is why I've made an effort to publish a few new videos every week. Chris appears to be right because every week more people subscribe to my YouTube channel. As of Wednesday, more than 8,500 people have subscribed to my YouTube channel for tips, tutorials, and live Q&A sessions. Check it out.

Here's one of my recent tutorials published on YouTube.

Five Uses of Comics In Your Classroom

On Thursday afternoon I hosted a webinar about using comics in the classroom. The recording of the webinar is only available to those who registered, but the slides that I used can be seen as embedded below.