To support an upcoming streaming event I needed to create a gif. (Let’s not digress into a debate on how to pronounce gif.) Denver Public Schools has a commitment box that is made available at all large culture-building events. Since this upcoming event will be solely online I came up with an idea to make a virtual commitment box to interact with.
First, I needed to create a gif showing someone dropping a commitment card into the box. I searched for gif creators that could do the job for free and with the least amount of hassle. I tried giphy.com, Imgflip and gifmaker.me with the latter winning out for ease of use. I shot a four photo sequence of my coworker, Anna, dropping a commitment card into the box. When I uploaded the images to gifmaker.me the interface was intuitive and simple. Although all I had to do was upload and reorder the images, there were multiple choices available to me: resizing, animation speed, repeats, and even the option to add music. In about a minute total working time, I had my gif downloaded.
My next task was to create the Google form and add it to the top. Google forms is becoming more and more open to customization. I chose a blank form, changed the color to match the card Anna holds in the animation and then uploaded the gif to the description area of the form. You can take a look at the finished product here:
I think this is going to work out pretty well for the event. What do you think? What is your favorite gif maker?
Recently I had a request to create a check for understanding quiz at the end of a screencast. Leveraging my updated Camtasia software with interactive hotspots, I was able to add a link to a Google form. I chose Google forms to ease the access and share reporting with a group of people who would need to see the data.
