1. TECHNOLOGY & CREATIVE WRITING Benjamin Zacarelli for 12th grade students Using technology to aid your writing! 2. Evaluation of Content All websites, organizations, and tools included in this presentation have been thoroughly researched and vetted by the presenter as to their informative validity and usefulness. Any of those included in this presentation are sources I recommend highly, having personally used all of them over the course of my education and teaching. All images used in this presentation were created by the presenter from screenshots of their respective web pages, with the URL to all web pages cited in the notes section of each slide and listed on the Sources Cited slide at the end of the presentation. 3. How can technology and media aid the writing process? All writers are, essentially, storytellers, whether they write fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or lyrics. In order to create effective stories, writers need to recognize what makes a story compelling. This is one area in which writers can look to technology for aid. 4. darcypattison.com/blog Darcy Pattison has made a living out of creative writing. She is the author of many books for children, fiction and non-fiction. She is also a teacher of writing, a blogger, and the founder of publisher Mims House. Her blog on fiction writing is a fantastic tool for creative writers. 5. The University of Iowa & The Writing University Podcasts Although the University of Iowas Writing University no longer posts new podcasts, its extensive archive of podcasts on creative writing can be an invaluable tool for any writer, including students who may be unfamiliar with creative writing. 6. John Brown & Larry Correia on YouTube A series of videos are posted on YouTube from a lecture given by John Brown and Larry Correia at Life, the Universe, and Everything on February 11, 2010. The lecture was entitled How to Write a Story that Rocks and offers interesting and informative insight into creative writing methods. John Brown is a noted author who most often writes short stories. Larry Correia is the New York Times bestselling author of Monster Hunter International and other noted works of fiction. 7. Inspiration Software, like Kidspiration, is a great resource for so many different disciplines. As a potential teaching aid to creative writing, Inspiration offers information and templates for Webbing, which is an excellent way for writers to map out themes, characters, plotlines, and other elements essential to creating an effective story. 8. Teaching Material I edHelper.com is a great resource for teachers of any subject. It provides many different types of materials teachers can use in subject units. In teaching creative writing, I might assign the class a short story to read, such as The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling, in order to have the students experience effective storytelling firsthand. The materials above would aid such a lesson. 9. Teaching Material II Samples of effective outlines for storytelling can be found all over the internet, but the best examples are usually created by colleges or universities. The example to the left is a very simple short story outline from Notre Dame Academy, a middle school in Canada. 10. Teaching Material III Wordle is an exceptionally cool tool that can be used to find prominent words in a given selection of text, such as the wordle on the right, created from Poes The Tell-Tale Heart. This would be an invaluable aid to students who wish to analyze their own writing and determine what the reader will walk away with. 11. Teaching Material IV inklewriter is another example of a cool, interactive way for writers to organize, write, and eventually publish their stories. It also is an excellent tool for integrating innovative media into lessons for teachers. 12. Collaborative Internet Resource Goodreads.com is a website designed to connect readers in order to share reviews and information on books Students can use Goodreads to analyze the stories they read and interact with both other students and the teacher through reviews and social media. 13. Additional Internet Resources for Creative Writing http://www.writing.com/ https://www.coursera.org/course/basicwriting http://writing.colostate.edu/ http://thewritepractice.com/creative-writing-tools/ http://lynettebentonwriting.com/ *For a list of the most useful writing apps available for cell phones, you will want to read this article by the Huffington Post from 2013. 14. Sources Cited Darcy Pattison / Fiction Notes - http://www.darcypattison.com/ The Writing University - http://www.writinguniversity.org/podcast How to Write a Story that Rocks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bS7sSy2GMM Inspiration - http://www.inspiration.com/inspiration-language-arts-examples EdHelper - http://www.edhelper.com/short_stories/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_King.htm Outline - http://www.notredameacademy.ca/docs/homework/Short%20Story%20Outline.pdf Wordle - http://www.wordle.net/create The Tell-Tale Heart text - http://americanliterature.com/author/edgar-allan-poe/short- story/the-tell-tale-heart Inklewriter - http://www.inklestudios.com/inklewriter/ Goodreads - http://www.goodreads.com/