A Serious Use For Silly Media

A Serious Use For Silly Media

This Activity was created by Ontario Extend (@extend)

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Module:

Animated GIFs are familiar as expressions of emotion in social media but are also of educational value as short looping videos to demonstrate a process. Think of an animated GIF as a “short-form” video as way to show a phenomenon or the steps in a process where it would help understanding to see the steps repeated.

To do:

  1. Think about a concept or process in the subject you teach or are most interested in. What might you be able to demonstrate in an animated GIF form, one that allows rapid repetition in a few frames?
  2. Try the Giphy Make a GIF tool to generate an animated GIF from a section of a video or a series of uploaded photos.
  3. Include a link to your activity as your response for this activity.
  4. After you make your submission, save the web address to your response (found in the green confirmation box) so you can use it later for your badge submission form. 

Examples:

Sign With Robert is clearly an effective way to demonstrate sign language.

Can repetition illustrate the geometry of parking?

Can it help to understand the motion of an organism?

Great Animated GIFs of Science

This activity is part of the Let’s Experiment section of the Experimenter Module.

Example for "A Serious Use For Silly Media":
https://giphy.com/gifs/math-cheetah-h4Tvmtw6AAZoxUwZSQ

Math GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

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Resources for this Activity

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59 Responses for this Activity

    4 Resources for this Activity

    • A Purposeful Use for Silly Media (TCC2019 Pre-Conference Workshop)
      shared by Alan Levine (@cogdogblog@gmail.com)

      “Like memes, animated GIFs are often used to generate a laugh, a smile, maybe just a ¯_(ツ)_/¯. But considering them as short-form video, their looping structure is effective for demonstrating natural processes or showing hands-on techniques where repetition can aid understanding.”

    • Animated GIF Makes (Networked Narratives Make Bank)
      shared by Alan Levine (@cogdogblog@gmail.com)

      A collection of activities that show the two ways of making GIFs with the Giphy Maker tool

    • Maslow Gif
      shared by Christopher Rowe (@ChristopherRowe)

      I’ve created a GIF to present the structure of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Most students who take the course that I discuss this in have seen this before, so this is more of a refresher activity… so the GIF I think is sufficient for this purpose.

    • Using an animated Gif for my Power Point
      shared by Jane Carr (@jscarr)

      For this exercise I chose to make use of both an animated GIF and a regular GIF to introduce the Safety slide set that I show to students at the start of the course: Electronic Engineering Skills. I use this slide to identify some of the hazards involved in working with electronics.

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