Wolverhampton City Learning Centre (CLC)

Over the last couple of months, there have been a number of articles popping up in my RSS newsfeeds in Google Reader, or shared via Twitter, that share a common theme: how can software and web tools support creative writing and story-telling?

In a short series of blog posts, I’m going to try to pull together a set of ideas, resources and links under the following headings:

• Creating a context for writing
• Planning and story-boarding
• Creation, sharing and reflecting

Creating a context for writing

Any piece of creative writing - a poem, a piece of descriptive writing, or a story - needs a context, a reason for its existence. How can the web and software help?

Using digital photographs and panoramas

One very simple idea to provide a context for creative writing is to use a single image or sequence of images. You might visit Flickr.com, find an image, and present it to students as a starting point for their writing. Where might this picture lead them?

Picture shared under a Creative Commons license by Flickr user “Lyza Danger”

This idea can be extended by instead asking students explore 360 degree virtual panoramas from Panoramas.dk. Look around, look up, look down - there are a large number of panoramas to explore … including the surface of the Moon.

• An example - Bristol Balloon Festival - 360 degree virtual panorama

Using video games

Games can provide a compelling stimulus for creative writing. As part of our CLC Doctor Who cross-curricular day, students are asked to create a piece of creative writing based on a scene from a self-penned MissionMaker game in which aliens invade the Earth. The results have frequently been impressive:

¨I approached the steel gates. What were those odd-looking figures? I heard weird thunder sounds as they appeared. Why were they circling the square? I struggled to reach for my small camera. Two turned to three, three turned to four. How many were there? Their eyes were like goggles on top of slimy, bony, bodies. The shadows sheltered me from their vision¨.

Commercial games can provide immersive contexts for creative writing. Tim Rylands (www.timrylands.com), pioneered the use of the computer game Myst to stimulate his primary school students.

Mr. Warner, a UK Primary teacher, has written recently on his fantastic blog about his own experience of using Myst. His articles reporting and reflecting on his lessons with Myst are essential reading:

• Using Myst within Literacy - Week 1
• Using Myst within Literacy - Week 2
• Using Myst within Literacy - Final Reflections

Using Google Earth

Google Earth, Google’s 3D Earth “simulator” (for want of a better word) is usually seen as an amazing tool for Geography and Science teachers and students. What about using it for creative writing?

On his inspiring ICT in my Classroom blog, Tom Barrett. a primary teacher in Nottingham, has been describing his use of Google Earth as a resource for both stimulating and recording students’ creative writing. In a series of 5 articles, Tom details the process he followed with his Year 5 students; how his creative writing lessons worked, the challenges he faced, and how he and his class overcame them:

• Google Earth is our Paper - Part 1
• Google Earth is our Paper - Part 2
• Google Earth is our Paper - Part 3
• Google Earth is our Paper - Part 4
• Google Earth is our Paper - Part 5

Tom’s class integrated Google Earth with voice-recording (using Vocaroo), to create a story based on the escape of James from his Aunt’s house in James and the Giant Peach. They used the “Add Placemark” feature in Google Earth to locate both their creative writing and recorded narration along their chosen route.

Google StreetView

Some locations in Google Earth now also include Google StreetView, Google’s “on the ground” panoramic record of a city. For example. fly to Rome in Google Earth, and you may see this:

The wealth of information that Google Earth can now overlay over a location is extraordinary: from Wikipedia articles to YouTube videos and 3D buildings modelled in Google SketchUp. (Information about Ancient Rome has also recently been overlayed over the modern city .. amazing). Click onto one of the small camera icons on a street, and Google Earth flies you into a Street View of the Colliseum:

What an inspiration for creative writing! Create a route, explore the route, imagine the events that could happen, describe the buildings, the sky, the old man taking a photo of the Coliseum (Is he a friend? A spy?). Imagine travelling back in time to Ancient Rome. What has changed?

Street View only currently covers cities in the US, Japan, Australia, France, Italy, and Spain. Street View in UK cities is expected soon.

Other ideas

How else might we inspire creative writing? Here are some other ideas:

• Use a sound effect, a brief narrated snippet, or a piece of dramatic music as a starting point.
• Generate a random title for your writing using WordWhizz
• Create the start of the story one sentence at a time from a small group of students … Once upon a time … point to a student … and he became lost in the … point to another student
• Create a movie poster first using Glogster.com, or from an digital image at Big Huge Labs. Now imagine the film, visualise it (music helps), and go from there!
• Use Kar2ouche to place a photo of group of students at the doorway to a fantasy world, accompanied by a character as a guide. Where will the door lead? How will you get home?

In the next part of the series - planning and story-boarding

Have you got other ideas for creating a context for creative writing? Please share them using the comment form.