Penzu

What: Keep a diary online.

Ease of use: Penzu is simple to use, with some more advanced features when you're ready for them.

Writing application: Some of the best stories we tell, are the ones we tell about ourselves. Our passions and fears are often the most potent, and liberating to write about.

Regular writing is perhaps one of the best habits for budding writers to engage in. With Penzu, you can keep a diary online that's entirely private, or share it with others selectively.

Students might decide they want to use Penzu to write a personal diary about their fears and aspirations. This would certainly be a popular choice, but journal writing can be so much more, and here's a few ideas to get you started:

• Diary entries between two characters are a great way of writing a story. You get a sense of time passing, and can write it with a friend, each taking a turn to write an entry.
• It's a great way to build suspense in a story. Because of the diary format, you get a very present 'ticking clock' sensation as you read each entry.
• Cataloguing a series of events is done more easily with a diary. For example, student journalists monitoring an event each day, and noting updates and observations in their Penzu diary (see also The Digital Narrative Story Chaser resources for this activity).

Writing with an existing text: Taking on the voice and personality of a character in a class novel can be a great way of exploring character and structure.

Have students select a character in a class novel and write a series of imagined diary entries. Encourage them to provide proof for character traits revealed in their story. Is the character angry and impulsive in their diary entries? Ask them to offer foreshadowing evidence from the story.

You might also ask students to write over a series of entries, their observations on a novel. This is particularly effective if you're reading a novel to your class. After each reading, you might ask students to log into their Penzu accounts and write about what happened and predict they think will happen next.

Suited: Late primary and on will be able to use this product with ease.