Creative writing using Simulated Environment Apps

Simulated environment Apps like Epic Citadel and Castlerama can be used to inspire students in creative writing tasks. 

In each of these Apps you are immersed in a fantasy environment that you are able to walk around and explore.

Use the App for students to explore the environment and then generate descriptive words and phrases around what they saw.  Then students can use these as a basis for writing a story, or creating their own movie or even their own ibook or ebook app.
Here are some ideas from other teachers, schools and students:

Teacher Helen Walker discusses how she uses Epic Citadel to generate creative writing with her Yr 8 classes at 'Creative Writing using Epic Citadel'.

Danielle Bayes uses one iPad and Epic Citadel with her class of 28 year 3 students to immerse her students into this fantasy environment and uses this as a stimulus to discuss, think, imagine and share ideas as a precursor to writing and ultimately making a short movie with their iwn narrative of their experience in the fantasy environment. See the results at her blopost on Creative Writing with Epic Citadel.

At Ringwood North Primary School, students used Epic Citadel to create their own digital stories.  An example of one students final product inspired by Epic Citadel and created with other other Apps such as Doodle Buddy, Strip Design and Keynote can be found at their blogpost 'River of Belief'

Epic Citadel and Castlerama are currently free.

Take a look at Epic Citadel: