Answers

You find them usually on Yahoo image browse or something like that.  I tend to search for ________ GIF and sometimes I get some cools ones that pop up.  Then I copy and paste it right on the powerpoint and it works.   I did it for my intro and it worked. 

I have two animated gifs that I created but they won't animate in the powerpoint.  I wonder if it has to do with the version of powerpoint I have.

That might be it... did you play the powerpoint as a slideshow? Sometimes it works there instead on the page where you are editing it. I don't know enough to give you an answer.  I just know it worked for me.  It was sorta cute the kids pointed at it.  You might want to get a newer pp version.