The Fordson theme allows a teacher to upload an image file to be used in the header area for each course. This small customization has been hugely popular with our staff and also serves as a visual cue for people when viewing a course. A co-worker just showed me how they uploaded an animated gif and I was amazed. Never thought to try it. Check out the video to see how cool animated gifs can be in the Fordson header.
If you'd like to see our site that I use for many of the videos you can check out our Moodle 3.2 Sandbox demo site here:
http://moodlesandbox.dearbornschools.org/
Scroll down to see how the Fordson theme displays available courses on the homepage. I know the animated gifs can be obnoxious but they sure are cool on both Fordson and Pioneer. One of our tech coaches discovered how cool GIFs can look on our themes.
I am hoping you will like Fordson as much as we do!
https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=theme_fordson
This is beautiful Chris! Always great things you are doing. Thank you for always sharing.
Thanks Donna. Glad you appreciate it. Always very nice to get a compliment once in awhile!
Hi Chris,
it's great to see other themes moving in the same direction as Snap by using cover images and animated gifs, but just wanted to make you aware the Nina Geometrieva & Seth Eckert gif you are using isn't CC licensed.
You may want to remove from your videos until you contact them or credit appropriately.
The rather lovely original poster is available to buy here https://society6.com/product/the-big-planet_print#1=45
Cheers
Stuart
I think this would fall under fair use, wouldn't it?
Personally I would say no.
It does actually.
That may be true in the USA but I think in the UK it is not so...that's assuming the Wiki itself is correct?
EDITED
I've just found this here...https://creativecommons.org/about/contact/
Is Creative Commons against copyright?
Absolutely not. CC has responded to claims to the contrary. CC licenses are copyright licenses, and depend on the existence of copyright to work. CC licenses are legal tools that creators and other rights holders can use to offer certain usage rights to the public, while reserving other rights. Those who want to make their work available to the public for limited kinds of uses while preserving their copyright may want to consider using CC licenses. Others who want to reserve all of their rights under copyright law should not use CC licenses.
Cheers
Mary
As previously mentioned I downloaded the GIF from here: https://giphy.com/search/animated-gif It was not very clear where the work came from and I assumed it was free to use as there was no copyright.
This is where I go for every other image in the video: https://www.pexels.com/ with a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.
I added a link to where the animated GIF was obtained from in the video description and a link to the artists facebook page which was all I could find. This is found on the youtube page.
As for fair use, I am no lawyer. It's not a competing commercial product and was used as a demonstration of a completely different purpose in an educational setting to demonstrate something. It is not including as part of the theme nor was it the focus of the video. It was purely a demonstration of how an animated gif can be used in Moodle.
"In short, we must often ... look to the nature and objects of the selections made, the quantity and value of the materials used, and the degree in which the use may prejudice the sale, or diminish the profits, or supersede the objects, of the original work." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
I don't see how a demonstration of an animated gif as a header in Moodle would diminish from profits of the original owner. I am not even sure the original artist produced the animated GIF as I could not trace it back or find it anywhere other than on the Giphy.com website. Is it possible someone else took her photo and animated it into a loop?
I found it on a website called giphy.
https://giphy.com/gifs/BHNfhgU63qrks
It's not included with the theme. We were just playing around with animated gifs. It's also a desktop linked all over the internet.
I sent Nina a note on Facebook. If she doesn't like my use of the GIF I will take the video down.
Using the Course Summary GIF file as the course header image is a nice touch. My thoughts on the use of animated gifs:
(1) My first impression is Wow! It gives a nice feel to the course tiles. Makes them come alive. A creative choice of animated GIF can liven up the Moodle course page.
(2) Not everyone likes animated gifs. so use with care. Also for those who may not like having their course header image a GIF animated file, thankfully the height of the header file is cropped (proportionally shorter than the original GIF file's height)
(3) Animated GIFs tend to be larger in size (e.g, 5500kb) compared to a static image file. So since many users use their mobile phones to access Moodle, it is wise to reduce the size of your GIF file - which will result in shorter load times of the image.
For example, I downloaded this rose gif file from: https://giphy.com/gifs/flowers-timelapse-E5QTH5mGZkzza.
The specific download link for the flower is h t t p s : / / media . giphy . com/media/E5QTH5mGZkzza/giphy.gif. 
This is a 492Kb file.
Then I went to https://ezgif.com/optimize and compressed the rose by using "Lossy GIF" compression method and 198 compression level. That gave me a reduce file of 216Kb. We're talking 50% reduction in size at the cost of some discernible loss of quality (dithering)! I've uploaded to compressed animated gif. See the file attachment below.
Hope this helps, yeah?
Frankie Kam
The rose below is 217Kb in size. My apologies for hypnotising you.
