Technology Tips: Anagram Animator

Make sure you do the GoogleDocs Tech Tip first, before you do any other tips this semester.

If you like to play word games, you are probably already familiar with anagrams, which are words that contain the same letters (grammata in Greek) rearranged (that's the ana- part: ana-gram). Of course, anagrams also got a big boost in popularity from their use in Harry Potter and also in the Da Vinci Code. You can read more about anagrams in this Wikipedia article and there is a long list of anagrams in English here.

For this Tech Tip, you will use the WordSmith website to create an anagram AND to turn that anagram into an animated gif image. You might even find this kind of image both eerie and useful to your in one of the stories you write for class!

STEP ONE: FIND AN ANAGRAM or CREATE THE ANAGRAM. You can find lots of existing anagrams online, and it's fine if you want to use a famous anagram that you find online for this assignment. If you want to create your own anagram, go to the WordSmith Anagram webpage. I strongly suggest you click on the Advanced Options link right away, because you will find some good options there for managing what will probably be the huge number of anagram possibilities that will result in you are using English as your language; you can also choose languages other than English, too. Start with something short; you will be surprised at how many anagrams English can produce! I put in DOCTOR WHO and I got... of course! ... TORCHWOOD.

STEP TWO: CREATE ANIMATION. Next, click on the animations link directly above your anagram results, or use the link here: Create animations of your favorite anagrams. Again, I recommend the advanced options so that you can choose your colors and other options. Type your starting word into the box, and then type in the anagram word you have chosen in the other box. Choose any other options you want to set. Then, click the Create Animated Gif button. If you are happy with the results, save the image file to your computer!

Here's Doctor Who:

Here's an example of one of my favorite Latin anagrams: Quid est veritas? Est vir qui adest. You can read about that one on this page of Latin anagrams.

STEP THREE: SEND EMAIL. When you are done, send your animated anagram file to me as an email attachment - or, if you are using it in a storytelling assignment for class, send me a link to the page where you have used the image online. Let me know if this is an anagram you found online or if it is one you created yourself! Please use this subject line for the email: TechTip Animated Anagram.

When you have sent in the email, you can do the Gradebook Declaration for Extra Credit. Here is the text of the Gradebook Declaration you will complete: