Giddy Over Giphy

Do you ever stumble upon something that is probably old, but to you it is brand new...never before dreamed or imagined...and you go nuts over just thinking about how your students will react?  Well, that was definitely me last night.  In fact, I woke up this morning realizing that I had dreamed about sharing my new find with the kiddos.  If you have read this blog for any length of time, you already know that I am infatuated with augmenting my world.  Seeing an inanimate object come to life through the use of an app is so fascinating to me and witnessing this used with students brings me great joy every time.
I was playing around with an idea for a new virtual field trip and exploring possibilities for augmented writing prompts when I found Giphy, a website where you can find and create animated images.  Paired with Aurasma, you have an image that can be placed in a student's writing journal to serve as a writing prompt.  When the student scans the picture with the Aurasma app, the animated image created with Giphy comes to life on the screen!
So, here is how it works:
Step 1: On Giphy, select create.

Step 2: Find a video that you would like to transform into an animated image and paste the URL of into the prompt on Giphy.

Step 3: Choose the start and end time for your animation.

Step 4: Scroll down and select create gif.

Step 5: Download your animated gif by clicking the advanced tab and choosing download.  I used the downloaded file as the animation for an Aurasma trigger for our interactive student notebooks (I'll post details soon).

Here is my gif...ready to pair with an article from Readworks on these Gentle Giants.