I was researching the best way to use maps to introduce the topic of ordered pairs to a beginning algebra class, when I stumbled upon something totally different, and totally unique: A website called Wordle that takes text and turns it into JAVA created art. I actually threw the RSS feed for this website into their art generator (a wonderful option, by the way), and the results are below. Immediately, my wheels started spinning about how to use this in a math class, and viola! The nice people who write the Ed Tech 4 Math Blog Technology & Software For Teaching Math already have a nice post on how Math Vocabulary Becomes Art. As you can see from my attachments, Wordle can also provide word counts, which could lead to a lot of discussion about word frequencies, etc. Enjoy! This also means that a future post is still coming about using mapping in the classroom.
