I have just spent some time playing with Kerpoof, an online story creation program which came my way via a twitter post from Alec Couros. He mentioned that it was one of his four year old daughter’s favourite online activities. Students create pictures, stories and movies by selecting backgrounds, characters and images. They can add text to tell a story.
Just after reading Alec’s comment I came across a review on Chris Harris’ blog at School Library Journal, Kerpoof – All that and More!
Friendly controls provide an easy interface for creating images, books and even movies. Using a selection of characters and objects that can be placed in your selected backdrop, you can tell a story. Characters and objects can be resized, flipped (resize it into the negative space to flip), rotated and provided with speech bubbles. Characters in movies can move, say things, and perform other pre-coded animations.
He highly recommends the site and mentions the teachers’ page which includes lesson plans, ideas and ways that the program can be used within the curriculum.
This is a wonderful little storytelling tool that can be used with primary and elementary students. It is cool enough that students will think of it as a game and yet be learning and creating while having fun – imagine!
