Electrical Circuits as Animated Gifs

An animated gif is basically a video that auto plays and loops, creating a short animation without sound. Often used online in social media, the impact of the short, repetitive movie can be one of emphasis and emotion.

Apple's free app Keynote now has the ability to export any slide animation as an animated gif. Simply add builds and transitions as normal and then use File > Export to choose the gif option. These are easily shared on Twitter or can be added to slide presentations for emphasis.

In Mr. Morrow's 8th grade Science classes at O'Neill Public, students have been learning about harnessing energy and the role of parallel and series electrical circuits. Asking students to create an animation to explain key concepts was a truly authentic assessment opportunity. View some of the student examples below:

Student-Created "Quiz Shows" made in Keynote

The power of non-linear hyperlinking is impressive for the learning process of students of all ages. By simply using the "Link to a slide" feature in Keynote, learners can essentially "program" a set of slides into an interactive game show.

 Sixth grade students from Mrs. Sarah Vogel's Social Studies classes at West Holt recently created this multimedia exemplars to review their unit on South America. Try your hand at answering their questions and see how you do!

  Note: Original products were created and shared with the class as "Links Only" presentations in Keynote. To make sharing on this blog easier, I converted them to Google Slides presentations, where they unfortunately lost some formatting and functionality.







 For step-by-step directions of how to replicate this activity, visit this resource.

Biographical Infographics

Creative, unique, and informative- these English7 @oneilleagles students shared their biographical research on selected poets through #infographics built in #Keynote. An extra-special touch was each one's audio recording of a poem they added! @AppleEDU #EveryoneCanCreate #poetry

listen to Hope's audio added to her infographic:

To launch this project with students I first shared the definition of an infographic with some semi-biographical examples I found online.  I also created a starter example of one my favorite poets, our Nebraska poet, Ted Kooser. Using this exemplar, I demonstrated how to change the Keynote slide size to custom dimensions to create the "canvas" for the infographic. Then, using simple shapes and remixing  images from external sources, we began to lay out the poster design. Colors evoke mood and a strong background image with the opacity altered can demonstrate theme. An introduction to typography was explained in order to use fonts and formatting for emphasis. Finally, I showed students how to record an audio excerpt from one of their poet's most popular poems and encouraged students to create their oral readings for homework. 

Total class time spent on this project equalled three class periods: one day (before I arrived with their English teacher Mrs. Reinhardt-Sigler) for students to research their selected poet and complete a notes sheet, one day for how-to instruction and time to get started, and one day for completion of the creative infographics.