Making GIFs for Tumblr

I follow several sports teams and leagues on Tumblr just to see how they are using the site.  I've noticed that MLB and a lot of baseball teams like to use funny GIFs to catch attention.  I'm trying my hand at that myself this year.

There are several free video to GIF sites that I looked at.  At first, I was to export directly from my video editing software (Sony Vegas) to a GIF, but that didn't work.  Then I realized a lot of GIFs are made from videos that are already online, so I tried a YouTube to GIF creator, GIFSoup.  That seems to work much better.  The proof will be the increase (or lack thereof) of followers this year.  We'll see...

Note to Self: Use Video

Every year I've taught Sports & Entertainment Marketing, I've had my students vote for who they think will win  college football's most prestigious individual honor, the Heisman Trophy.  Until this year, I had always put together a PowerPoint that contained the stats of each player.  After we went through the nominees, students would turn in a ballot with their answer.  The students that were interested in college football were sorta excited, but no one else was.

This year, I decided to try the above SlideRocket.  Fortunately, my district has allowed the use of YouTube on a very restricted (and temporary) basis.  Since four of the five nominees' schools created a video of highlights for each player, it was easy to create a SlideRocket that was interesting to watch.

The neatest thing about using this SlideRocket was the students' reactions.  I had to calm down my normally staid first period because they were so excited about what they saw.  Now if I can just find the time to create these type of presentations more often...