GIF JAM – Open Educational Media

Animated GIFs have been featured on this site as regular media assignments in the EdMedia program as a means to practice techniques in photography, videography and web publishing to name a few. The GIF JAM occuring for the EdMedia Monday this March 14th will showcase sources of GIFs, excellent courses and tools for making GIFS and open a discussion about how they can be used for educational purposes. ON this post I will try to cover some of the history of the GIF, review past educational GIF projects and point you to some next steps for using GIFs in your course, or just for playing around.

GIFstory

To kick things off lets go back the beginning and review some GIFstory. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format and its important to remember how integral the characteristic of this format have led to the GIFs proliferation.

You can read this piece from the website Mashable for good synopsis on the history of the GIF and also check out this 6 min documenary covering the rise of the GIF to from its inception in 1987 to today.

GIFs Today

Today GIFS can be found everywhere. The popular website Giphy has become the defacto clearing house for sharing and showing all the latest, and the GIF Keyboard is popping up on many social media platforms including twitter and facebook. I have posted a few of my favorite sites and recent pages below, but you do not have to look far to find an animated GIF these days.

Eg. of Cool GIFS

https://www.pinterest.com/sinremite/illustrated-gifs/
Old Paintings, Grotesquely Reanimated | GIF Six-Pack – http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/old-paintings-grotesquely-reanimated–gif-six-pack?utm_source=tcptwitterus
GIF Six-Pack: ‘1984’ and the Surveillance State – http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/gif-six-pack-endless-sci-fi-to-celebrate-1984?utm_source=tcptwitterus
Artsy GIFS (cinemagraphs) – http://cinemagraphs.com/
http://bionicteaching.com/gifseum/
Stereoscopic GIFs – http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/learn-how-to-make-stereoscopic-gifs

GIFs in Education

As a form of cultural expression you may be surprised to learn that the animated GIF has a strong and growing place in the landscape of educational media. Several of our past EMP participants have created GIFs for Physics, Physics, Archives, Library, Mathematics, to name a few. The assignments I’ve created have been design to test technical knowledge and use the media theory.

GIF assignment 1:

GIF assignment 2: (as OERS)

There are many great courses on the internet dedicated to the animated GIF so for further exploration please check out these pages.

GIF MASTERS

@eleanor_lutz

http://tabletopwhale.com/index.html

http://tabletopwhale.com/2014/11/03/how-to-make-an-animated-infographic.html