I can easily get lost looking at goofy GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format), which is basically an animated or moving image that’s shared digitally. When tied with a great caption, they can keep me laughing for quite a while. Today I stumbled across a series of educational GIFs here. As a lifelong learner, I thought this was a great concept.
Of the 10 listed, I found the second one about the Scale of the Universe particularly interesting. Our planet itself is really part of something so large and it is amazing how small of a piece our earth is in the whole universe. It is so very vast and complex.
Beyond being fascinated, I got thinking how great a tool like this is in terms of helping us learn smaller bits of information. In the past, we might have had to explain using measurements that I can’t truly grasp or picture in my head, such as light years and millions of kilometers.
But show me a photo of the teeny, tiny, barely visible dot that is the solar system in which we live? That is a lot easier for me to comprehend. We have so many wonderful tools we use for fun in today’s world. I hope we will continue to find new ways to take these fun tools and make it easier to digest information, even if it’s something that we already kind of knew but never really respected. Although I am a writer, sometimes a photo or an animation or a video just helps me to better understand a concept as complex as the scale of the universe.
In conclusion, if you looked at the GIFs, which was your favorite? Do you have any examples of short, quick learning tools like these little animated pieces?