Digital Tools To Boost Your Creativity

Get the Creative Writing Club schedule in your diary!

Digital Tools For Creativity

So many tech tools out there, so little time to explore them. I’ve done the hard work for you so you can just sit back, read, enjoy and hopefully be inspired to try out these digi-tools that can push your creative reading, creative writing and creative thinking to the next level.

Social Reading

Reading is known as a pleasurable activity that helps you learn while you exercise your brain. The learning is multifarious - we learn not just about ourselves, but also about others, and that develops our ability to empathise, such an important skill in a world with so much tension and conflict. Reading is known to reduce stress and improve your mental health. And personal and professional outcomes are tied to your exposure to reading as a young person.

But it’s not just an individual sport. There is so much more to gain from collaborating with others. One way is to read with a group - like a reading circle. I run something like this through my Creative Writing Club where we read short pieces in our own time and then discuss them live. Another way to set up peer-to-peer social learning is by utilising a web-based tool like hypothes.is that can be embedded on to a web page or website that facilitates social reading. As a teacher you can engage your students in social annotation, simply by selecting any text online to annotate. This is the next level up from a Google document, where you need to copy and paste the text you want to critique. And hypothes.is comes with additional features such as the ability to post publicly or privately, to reply to or share any annotation, annotate in groups and easily search your annotations.

Daily Writing

Establishing and maintaing a habit is key to success in any field out there. In terms of English language skills, writing in particular, one way to develop your writing is through daily prompts. And what better way than through free app Daily Prompt. Not only are there prompts, but also a place to discover readings and the opportunity to take part in competitions.

Creativity expert Dave Birss has a wealth of cool resources on his website, my favourite being Story Dice and Writing Ideas. Story Dice is a story idea generator. Click a button to roll the dice and a set of five images appear. Use these images to write a story. While Writing Ideas are based on random cards with words which represent a person, place, action and thing. Again, challenge yourself to combine these ideas into a narrative.

Creative Thinking

Continuing with Dave’s great website, he has a Creativity Exercise which helps you combine two random things in order to create something new. Another way to help spark new ideas is using the Brainsparker Creativity app via visual prompts and quotes to stimulate your brain. And if you like to be creative with a group, you are more than welcome to join us in the Creative Writing Club, where we read, discuss, write, and, occasionally, laugh our way to creativity.

Have you tried these web-based tools before? Which ones will you try for yourself/your classroom? Let me know how you get on.

Photo by Tim Mossholder from Pexels