As an English Teacher, I’ve come to find
that there are not many technologies we could use in our classrooms, besides
websites. I have stated in previous blog posts, that I would be wary about
students using their laptops in my classroom. So the least I would be able to
do for them is give them a good list of resources that my student would be able
to use. I remember, back when I was a student in high school, every year, we
would have that one creative writing paper.
The paper would be able to be about
anything, but it had to be fiction. As a creative writing minor now, you could
imagine I was always happy about said assignments, but my peers, not so much. They
would always struggle with coming up with a simple idea. As a teacher, I want
this process to be as enjoyable as possible. So what I would add to their sheet
of resources is a website called the Fiction Generator.
It is exactly what the title says it is.
Only this is one of the best ones I have seen. This gives the student a lengthy
plot summary, without writing the story for them; it just gives the student
information about a situation. Not only does this generator involve character
quirks, but also interesting settings and titles for the paper (something I always
had trouble with). What I liked most about this generator was that in the
description, it used very large vocabulary words, so not only is it helping the
student to write a very interesting fiction story, but it is also helping the
student expand their vocabulary.
I personally believe this would be a great
tool for a teacher to give students. It will allow them to not only explore
different writing tools, but also help expand their vocabulary knowledge.
I think that this Fiction Generator sounds like a great idea because I was that students that you mentioned above, not being too happy about a creative writing assignment like that! I have always had trouble coming up with even the simplest idea and I never knew what to write about. On the contrary, I do pretty well with things such as picture prompts, etc so I think that this Fiction Generator would have worked really well for me! You should definitely introduce this resource to your students when you get into the field! I think it will help them out so much!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a really helpful technology, but I do think it should be used with caution if the class is a Creative Writing class as you still want kids to come up with the work themselves. The website may help them too much, so I think you should this once and that's it. However, this would be a really cool website to use when analyzing the conventions of genre, as the prompts this website generates all follow certain conventions. You may wanna ask the student why the female character is always the quirky companion, etc. Great job finding this; the possibilities are endless!
ReplyDeleteResources for students are definitely helpful. I have used a lot of generators of all different sorts from jogging ideas all the way to creating work cited pages. Its a good idea to model to students how they should be using generators, so that they don't lean on this technology too often.
ReplyDeleteThis is the very first time that I see a generator of ideas, what a great concept. I would like to implement this idea into art through a lesson on making comic book strips. It would motivate students or guide them to have a basic idea of where are they going with the story. Thanks for sharing!
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