In education, student engagement refers to the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education. Generally speaking, the concept of “student engagement” is predicated on the belief that learning improves when students are inquisitive, interested, or inspired, and that learning tends to suffer when students are bored, dispassionate, disaffected, or otherwise “disengaged.” Stronger student engagement or improved student engagement are common instructional objectives expressed by educators.
The Glossary of Education Reform
The Promethean ActivPanel is a powerful engagement tool on its own, and adding ActivInpire collaborative teaching software brings a new level of interaction. But sometimes, you need a little more interest to make your flipcharts grab students’ attention more than ever before. Adding GIFs is a simple and fun way to capture student interest and ignite brilliance.
GIFs in flipcharts have so many uses:
- Showing STEAM and content scenarios
- Make seasonal attendance charts
- Curriculum night presentations
- Create moving instructions for a lab or assignment
- Share birthdays
- Creative daily agendas
- Highlight desired student actions or instructions
- Attention getters
- Adding breaks to lessons
- Celebrating student achievements
- Spark curiosity at the start of a lesson
- Create social emotional lessons
Once you have created or found your GIF and saved it to your computer, adding it to your flipchart is as easy as inserting the media and fitting it into your overall design. Adding GIFs is so easy, but adds so much interest to your ActivInspire flipcharts and your students will not want the learning to stop.
There is more than one way to add a GIF to an ActivInspire flipchart, the image above shows each one.
The quickest and easiest way is to drag the GIF from a folder or desktop. However, you can also follow these steps:
- Select the Media Folder from the ActivInspire toolbar or choose Insert and Media from the menubar
- You may also use the Control/Command button plus the M
- Then search for the GIF where you saved it on your computer
- Select the GIF and then open
- Once the GIF is in the flipchart, you can resize and move the GIF as you desire
Extend your learning:
- ActivInspire courses
- Become a Promethean Certified Teacher
