What it is: Kerpoof is a website that I use often with my students, I like it so much I have written about it a few times before here and here. Kerpoof has just added a brand new Make a StoryBook tool. Kerpoof’s Make a Storybook is an excellent addition to the already great lineup of Kerpoof tools. Here students can create their own picture and story books. They can use Kerpoof’s backgrounds, props, and characters or draw their own illustrations. Students can write their story in both text boxes and speech bubbles. The interface is extremely user friendly, kids will pick it up in no time! The sidebar has thumbnails of each page that students have created, making it easy to see their progress. Students can save their finished Story Books on their Kerpoof account to share with other students, download the finished Story Book to their computers, or print out their completed stories.
How to integrate Kerpoof’s Make a StoryBook into the classroom: Kerpoof’s Make a StoryBook is a fantastic place for students to “publish” their written work. Students can practice writing fairy tales, poetry, collaborative stories, fables, math based stories, illustrated science journals and non-fiction books. Kerpoof offers the freedom of creativity, students are only limited by their own imaginations. Set up your classroom computers as a publishing center where students can create a finished, published piece of work. Create collaborative class stories using Make a StoryBook on an interactive whiteboard or projector. Print out finished stories and add them to your classroom library for other students to “check out” and read.
Tips: In addition to the new Make a StoryBook, Kerpoof has added another fun activity called Spell a picture. Students can choose a background for their picture and use the letters below to practice spelling words. As they spell, pictures pop up that begin with those letters. As they continue spelling, Kerpoof narrows the pictures down to the one that a student has spelled. For example, when students select “c” pictures of a cow, cat, corn, car, cab, and cap pop up on the scene. As they continue selecting letters, the pictures get more specific and Kerpoof points to the suggested pictures of what has been spelled.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Kerpoof in your classroom.
This makes it easy for students to write and publish attractive stories that they can be proud of. Kind of like how blogs made it easy for lots of people to write!
I saw this yesterday and passed along to the other tech teachers. What an easy, colorful program. Can’t wait to use with students.
This site just keeps getting better and better. What would be awesome would be if you could import your own artwork as well a-la GoAnimate, but the stock artwork is pretty engaging.
Kerpoof is one of those sites that my son is on constantly. He remembered is log in after the first day they did it in class, and often comes home to continue whatever he was doing in class. Last night I saw your tweet about storybooks in kerpoof, and struck up a conversation with him to see if he knew. Apparently he’s been doing that “like forever in kerpoof.” I’ve kept in mind that he’s a 3rd grader, and looks for any chance to show me up, so we’ll just get on tonight and see what he’s been doing with it (or if he is indeed confused).
That would be great if they provided a way for students to upload their own work and pictures, good idea!
Kristen, he is probably thinking of the Make a Story option on Kerpoof. That one has been around for quite a while (I think since the beginning). Make a StoryBook adds some fun features that teachers requested to make it even more usable in the classroom. I think your son is going to love it!
I love how these sites look at what is going on in education and then start to cater for it. My students are going to love these 2 new options.
thankyou once again Kelly 🙂
Passing this along to my primary colleagues! Thanks! 🙂
They are great additions to the already amazing site!
This looks very cool. I will be sending this to the rest of the district on Monday. Keep sharingnthese great finds