Skip to main content

Animated GIF Stickers



I have been using GIF's for awhile to provide fun feedback to students but I never thought of putting them into a "sticker" format before. 

The idea was presented in a session I attended recently at GaETC21 (Georgia EdTech Conference 2021) and I LOVED it. 

The conference session was presented by Meredith White a high school Spanish teacher from Georgia. She got the idea and template from Ester Park and ran with it sharing how she used her stickers with students to provide engaging feedback. 

Ms. Park provides a video overview of the process and I created my own video, just in case her video ever went down, and to share more specific details with teachers in my district. 


In all my samples I used Ms. Park's sticker template. If you wanted to change it up they seem pretty simple to make. It looks like she did her wording in another program and inserted them as a picture but I used Google fonts with Google Word Art for the most part in my sample above. 

I've stepped out the process below for creating the stickers. It seems complicated but really isn't once you do the first couple.

1. Open, or create, a template in Google Slides. Here is the link to Ms. Park's template. 

2. Make a short video of what you want in the sticker. Use a neutral background. I have used a white wall and a green screen background both work. To film I used my computer camera and I have also used my cell phone camera.

3. Upload the video to unscreen.com to remove the background. It is a FREE site! Download the finished video to your computer.

4. Insert the video into the sticker template and use the cropping and masking tools to get it to fit the way you want (watching the video may help if you are not familiar with masking to a shape). 

5. Once you have your sticker made you will need to use some screencasting software, that allows you to save as a GIF. You will film a short loop of the sticker on Google Slides. I use, and love Screencast-O-Matic. The free version gives you 15 minutes of recording time, you can select the area you want to record, and save your finished video as a GIF. 

6. You will then take your GIF and upload it to Luna Pics (FREE site) where you will use their circle crop tool to finish your sticker (I would recommend watching the video for that step). 

I would recommend making a bunch at a time since it isn't really convenient to make them as needed. Mine are saved in a "GIF Button" folder in "My Picture" file. I have a series of "positive" and "needs improvement" stickers to pull from when needed. 

If you want curved font in your sticker. You can use the site PicFont (FREE). Check out this graphic from Tony Vincent on how to use the site to curve your font.


If you make some fun GIF stickers I would LOVE to see them. Feel free to comment or tag me on Twitter @atechcoachlife.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Digital Citizen Cards

This project idea came from a monthly challenge put out by Adobe Express. We have the free EDU version deployed in our district and I thought this might be fun to try with a class. I liked that there was a prize element where the students could win a classroom set of hero cards  and it tied in with Digital Citizenship Week (October 17-21).  I teamed up with an elementary technology lab teacher and we decided to try it with one fifth grade class.  We looked over the available templates and decided we liked the layout of the 6-8 template the best (because they had to list advice for staying safe online).  One of the best things about these Adobe monthly challenge templates is that they can be modified. The revised template can then be sent to students via a link or through Google Classroom.  All the templates for this challenge Adobe gives you a sample template with sample wording but we wanted students to come up with their own wording. Neither one of us was ke...
Post a Comment
Read more

Secret Messages - How To (Light and Color)

This was fun activity that I got from Roper Mountain Science Institute. They suggested red theater gel to reveal the message, which can get pricy. Another idea I heard was to ask movie theaters to donate left over 3D glasses, which also have a red filter. A guest speaker we had last year said red jello would work. Tried it this week and it worked like a charm. The students thought it was very cool. I found my "attention challenged" students had trouble focusing on making their own secret messages so I was very glad that I had made extra copies of the sheets from the GEMS Color Analyzer book that they could color and then check under the jello.
2 comments
Read more

Random Idea - Website Domain Name

For the past two years I have purchased a yearly subscription to a stand alone website (School World) which I love. I did this because our district was using a very nonuser friendly website for its teachers and I was tired of not being able to do what I want with the website they had given me. I got the idea of a separate website from one of my son's teachers who had done the same thing years ago, she used a different teacher website then School World but it was the same principle. The yearly subscription rate for my own website was $35 and was extremely reasonable. I simply provided a link on my district website to my new site. The district did not have a problem with this. Several teachers were doing it. I am one of these "don't ask...don't tell" teachers so even if there was a problem I wasn't going to find out about it :) Last year the rest of the fourth grade team purchased subscriptions to the site as well. We also purchased our own domain names throug...
1 comment
Read more