Let’s face it, the world today is full of GIFs. If you’ve embarked in screen-casting and you have NOT yet created a short GIF set of instructions, you certainly need to begin. For a short series of instructions, videos simply take too long to play. Gifs are short on time and have a huge visual appeal. It’s truly a Win! Win!

The following Gif is a short tutorial for an app called Ziteboard, that I have used with students. Instead of creating a video tutorial for them or talking them through the basics, this simple 6 slide app gif went a long way. They had more time to create their drawing and time wasn’t lost in instructions.

Steps to Creating a GIF:

1. Take screenshots of each step that you want to share. Try to keep the screenshots the same size and informational GIFs should be limited to 8 slides at the most. A rule of thumb is that If people will need to watch your GIF several times, than a video would be a better option.
2. Go to a gif creator. I used GifMaker.
3. Watch the below Gif for directions.
4. When choosing the amount of milliseconds, keep in mind that
   1000ms=1 second.
   

Super simple and they pack a punch. Make these and include them in Slideshows or websites. You can also use them to display students creative work, like shown in the blog about Playing in the Sandbox of CodeHS posted in June. The sky is the limit!

Categories: Apps