The Web is awash with Olympics-related GIFS — animated shorts from photos or videos.

Today, The New York Times ran a very interesting story calling GIFs:

a particularly compelling storytelling format, an amalgamation of video and photo that despite its inherent succinctness is able to convey a narrative.

And Poynter also ran an extended feature on them last week. I was particularly struck by it suggesting that creating GIFs from online videos fell under “fair use.”

Echograph looks like a very easy Smartphone app for creating GIFs, and you can read more about it at TechCrunch.

Google+ Photos Can Now Automatically Create Animated GIFs, Panoramas, HDR Images And Better Group Shots is a TechCrunch post sharing details on a ton of new Google+ photo-editing tools, including creating panoramas and GIFs.

The Studio from Giphy lets you easily create GIFs and animated slideshows.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Learning To Use The Video App “Vine.”

GIF Maker, Video to GIF lets you easily…create GIF’s from videos.

Comparing GIF Creation Options is from Jake Miller.

Get Your GIF On!! #EduGIFS! is from Dave Burgess’ blog.

How to Create an Animated GIF is from Richard Byrne.

7 Ways to Make Animated GIFs is from Richard Byrne.

How to Create Screencast GIFs is from Shake-Up Learning.

#espechat Gif Creation Workshop is a nice collection of recommendations.

GIFrun lets you easily create GIFs from YouTube videos.

Tenor is a Google search engine for GIFs that also lets you easily create your own.

GIF Banana lets you make simple quizzes.

GIFPal lets you make GIFs.

Have you tried having students create GIFs? How have you done it? Is there value to using them in the classroom somehow?