Back from IATEFL with a head full of apps to explore and share with you over the coming weeks. The last I heard mentioned was one familiar to me and one in my folder of story telling apps. In his talk on creative pedagogy language learning and technology, Graham Stanley spoke about giving prompts to help creative writing and mentioned Rory's story cubes
(slide taken from Graham's talk and used with permission)
If you are a regular on the social networking sites then you may well have come across Gareth's short story blog - where he writes a daily short story guided by the cubes (in this case the original cubes rather than the app). The cubes are a excellent way to provide prompts for stories but there is always the danger of one getting lost in the classroom, which is where the app has an advantage. The app, being on your device, is easier to carry around with you. The app replicates the 9 cubes, which gives you 54 images and 10 million combinations apparently which is quite a few prompts for a story. In the app you can add other sets of the cubes (the action cubes are free). It is available both on iTunes and on google play.
An app such as this works just as well on one device as it does on a set. In fact one device might even lead to better collaborative writing. Groups working together to make the story or using the dice as a turn taking aid, the first person starting the story with dice one and then student two continues using cube three and so on.
With the action cubes you have a ready made prompts for controlled practice of a tense if you prefer to do something not as lengthy as story writing. Of course the stories don't have to be written, opening a voice recorder o the mobile device and using it in conjunction allows the stories to be narrated (and then turned into a podcast for the students to keep and listen to time and again).
There are a range of similar apps (just put story dice into the search) but another popular one available on both android and apple is story dice.
One difference with this app is that it allows you to select a varying number of dice (from 1 to 10). The makers, realising the educational potential have even added a list of helpful tips which include ideas for education.
Another activity I was reminded of was one a former colleague of mine used to do using a grid full of images, which she drew. Displaying the grid (on an OHT) students worked in pairs to challenge each other to make a sentence linking two of the images. The sentence had to include the structure the teacher wished to review be it tense, conditional and so one. Using the cubes you can achieve the same (esp. using story dice as 10 works better than 9).
Likewise another old staple of the classroom, can be easily done using the images on the cubes - desert island. We've all probably done versions of this - you know the sort of things you are on a desert island these are the things you have with you, which are the most important (it always turns out to be the bit of plastic). Students work together in progressively bigger groups to rank the things. Well, the cubes / dice can be used for that.
In fact the uses are only limited by your and the students creativity, which takes me back to Graham's talk and creative pedagogy :-)