Monday, March 26, 2018

Add your own personal GIFs in your Google Classroom Header

If you would like to add GIFs to your Classroom Header it can be done. In the example I will be sharing I will be showing how to add your own personal images to the header. Tomorrow's post will show how to add a GIF from a Google search to your Google Classroom Header.

Bitmoji's, personal scaled down photos, and themes are fun to add to a classroom header; however, I thought it would be more fun to make the header a little more classroom specific. Actually, my wife asked me the other day if this could be done for students in her 4th grade class. An example would be a picture of each child in your classroom.

In this example we will use the following:
  • Google Photos (to create the GIFs / animations)
  • Website - ezgif.com (changes the speed of the GIF / animations)
  • Google Drawings (access through Google Drive as well) - where we will change the dimensions and post GIFs
    •  FYI - I changed the dimensions of the Drawing to Google specs - (800x200 pixels)
  • Video recording site (in the examples I used Screencastify free and Camtasia ($).

You can also see the YouTube video (embedded below)


Embedded below is a 4 minute and 23 second YouTube tutorial I created showing how to use your GIFs and load them to Google Drawings and then load to Google Classroom.
** Please not that the images may not appear crystal clear **



You will also see the step-by-step directions for the whole process I used to create the classroom header with GIFs. 
  • Select the photos you would like to use and create your animation / GIF
  • Download the animation and upload it to EZgif.com to slow down the speed as Google Photos uses a fast animation
  • In Google Drawings - I created a template with a blue background. To access the template click here and select File & Make a copy to make this your own Drawing.elect Insert - Image to find and insert your GIF(s)
    • Resize if needed
    • Add additional GIFs (if needed)
  • Open a site such as Camtasia or Screencastify (extension) to record your screen
  • You will need to crop / trim to show the header
  • Export the file as an animated GIF file
  • Make sure if using Screencastify you make the dimensions a bit larger than the 800x200. This is so you can trim later in Google Classroom.
  • Open Google Classroom and select upload file and find your file
  • Make sure to trim the photo 
  • Just a reminder that your photos may not be crystal clear - but hey - it's a start!
Take care!
Brad


No comments:

Post a Comment