Text on slides is boring.  Text on slides during distance education is even more boring. GIFs can be used to emphasize ideas in your content or even as “digital stickers” as you’re providing feedback on students work.  Animated Stickers can serve the same function.  It’s one thing to type, Yeah! as students successfully model a math problem and an entirely different thing to add an animated sticker to their slide while working collaboratively.

Chrome Extensions make this easy.  My favorite is GIPHY for Chrome because it offers both GIFs and Animated Stickers. One important thing to keep in mind is that not all GIFs are Age-Appropriate or School Friendly. So definitely search for your desired GIFs and stickers in advance as your planning.  

When I was using animated stickers during synchronous, distance learning, I prepared a Slide or Google Doc that I could just copy and paste the desired stickers from as I provided feedback to students. This advance preparation saved time and students looked forward to which sticker they would get as I checked their work.

Want to see how easy it is to add GIFs and Animated Stickers to Google Slides?  Here’s a short tutorial video that will walk you through the process.