GIFbait 🎣

Have you ever heard of clickbait? You know, those ads that say “Click here for your $200 Walmart gift card!” Admit it, even if just to yourself, you’ve clicked on some sort of clickbait once in your life. For me, it’s the shopping ads that appear in my social media feeds. I can’t tell you how many of those I fall for.

How about some GIF bait? What is GIF bait you ask? Well, aside from a cute fish pun, it’s using GIFs to engage your learners.  GIFs are fun, and are everywhere! Even when we text, we have a GIF menu. Our learners love using apps such as Snapchat or TikTok to make short videos, similar to GIFs. GIFs can engage!! If you’re unsure how to use or create GIFs, give a read below for some great ideas!

Brush Ninja

Brush Ninja is SUCH a fun tool! Not only it is engaging, it is also very user-friendly and doesn’t even require a sign-up or login. Anytime I’ve seen students use it, they love it! Personally, I like to use it to show cycles – but you could create a GIF on anything really.  Recently, Kelly DeMolles, a High School Science Teacher here in East Bridgewater, explored this tool to show Chemical bonds. She really enjoyed using it and plans to do so with her students as a way to demonstrate knowledge. See her example below!

For an overview on Brush ninja, watch the tutorial video included below:

If you’re looking for more, this is a great article by Richard Byrne of how to combine Brush Ninja and Google Slides for a beautiful presentation.

Tall Tweets

Another amazing Gif Creator, that doesn’t require drawing, is Tall Tweets. Basically, design what you would like to animate in Google Slides.  Then, go to Tall Tweets and add your slides. From there, you can alter the settings of how fast you want your Gif to move. I took a GIF and made it my Google Classroom Background! Tall Tweets comes in handy with screenshot Gifs too for instructions. The Gif below was created from these slides (click here) if you’d like to see how it works!

 

Take a look at the quick tutorial below on how to use this tool!

Text Gif Generators

Glitter Text Online

Perhaps a favorite of many around here is Glitter Text Online. It is EXACTLY what it sounds like – you write the text, and you pick the glitter! You can customize this in so many ways and then copy and paste it wherever you’d like!  Here’s an example below:

Typing Generator

Sometimes I like the look of typing text.  This is a great site where you can generate a Gif that looks like you’re typing!

Where to find already-made GIFs

When I need a good GIF or Sticker, I go to GIPHY.  Personally, I like the sticker option on the site more so than the GIF option.  You can check out the site here and feel good about what you use because it is all copyright free! You can even create them here if you’d like!

 

My Challenge to you:

Create some BAIT! Want to engage kids? Put a GIF on the assignment or step it up a notch and CREATE one! Let me know how it works out!

Take Care Everyone!
oFISHally Yours,

Erin Fisher 🐟 🐟 🐟

SNAPper Fish 🐟 📸

Bitmoji Image

Fun with Images

How’s it going? Having a good week? I hope you are! It’s a great day to have a great day! Something that makes me smile, and allows me to have a great day, is having fun with images. Whether it’s Bitmoji, Giphy, or Google Draw I always enjoy manipulating images for various items I’m working on.  I also LOVE showing students and teachers how to have fun with images!   There are so many great ways to express knowledge – a picture or series of pictures in a presentation is a fabulous option!  We can do so much with images – let’s check out a few ideas below!

Adobe Spark  

Adobe Spark is an AWESOME program that allows one to create a variety of digital media. Like many programs, it has a free and premium structure; but did you know that Adobe gives FREE Premium accounts to schools?  Recently, we signed up for it here in East Bridgewater – we even have single-sign-on! Adobe has many preloaded images that are copyright free, or you can use your own to create a multimedia presentation or infographic. Here are two student examples of the presentation option below (and one teacher example – mine) that showcase how it can be used.  This great tool is very user-friendly! Check it out today! **Note these student examples are still being worked on. 

 

Remove Backgrounds 

This was a great post by Eric Curts of the blog Control Alt Achieve.  He showcases 3 FREE picture editing tools. I really enjoyed RemoveBG. It allows you to remove a background from a picture. I used a picture of my family, but you could remove the background from any image. Then it allows you to have the image as a PNG (no white around it) for your files.

I had fun playing with this tool!

A NEAT trick with Slides! 

This trick is better to explain in a video! It involves setting an image as a background and using transparent shapes to make it interactive. Take a look below.

Giphy 

Do you like animated GIFs and Stickers? I certainly do! Giphy is an AWESOME database full of copyright free GIFs and stickers.  These are so much fun to use in Google Slide presentation, on a doc, in an email or just about anywhere!

 

Google Tip of the Week – MERGE ALL GOOGLE CLASSROOM ITEMS 

This great tip comes from Dana Goldstein, Mitchell School 4th grade teacher, who wanted to print a Google Doc assignment from her whole team! She was able to use PDFMergy and combine all 55 documents into one PDF for easy printing (rather than go through all of them individually to print). Check it out below!

Do you want to have some fun with images? Need help? Reach out!  I hope you have a GREAT day!

oFISHally Yours,

Erin Fisher 🐟 🐟 🐟