kerpoof – iLearn Technology

Story Math: Storytelling and Math

November 2, 2012Kelly Tenkely3 Comments4020 views

What it is: Story Math is a portion of the Hey Math! website. Story Math is a collection of 3 activities that use storytelling to present math in a new way. Students take part in the interactive stories to discover math in new ways, help them learn new math vocabulary and understand concepts more completely. There are currently three story activities available on Story Math: Mystery on the Block (students join the Premium Private Investigators and discover that geometry holds the key to the mystery of the missing kittens); The Perfect Arrangement (where students are introduced to permutations and how one clever lady uses math to subdue some squabbling scholars); and A Suitable Partner (where students engage in river-crossing puzzles to help Cammue pass the King’s test and marry Bindu).

How to integrate Story Math into the classroom: Storytelling is powerful! I believe that we are all wired for story. We yearn for it, it helps us to connect with the world around us. Story Math takes the power of storytelling and applies it to math. Through story, students see math concepts unfold and discover connections between math concept and math application. In addition to the story, Story Math includes games and activities where students can practice putting the math they have learned to the test.

Story Math makes a great introduction into new math concepts. Story Math can be used whole-class with an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. Students can take turns reading (mute it for this option because the text is read automatically). The story can be paused along the bottom while students discuss the stories and the math in the stories. Each story invites interaction, provide students with an opportunity to interact with the story. After the story, discuss what math connections were made. How can they be applied? What new vocabulary was learned? Follow up with the games/activities on classroom computers as a center activity, or again as a whole class on the interactive whiteboard.

Want to do one better? Show your students Story Math, ask them to explore each of the stories and make notes about the math concept introduced, the vocabulary and the story. Then have students take a math concept that they are learning, and ask them to create a story of their own. The first thing they should do is decide on the math concept they want to teach and the vocabulary that is associated. Next, they should create a storyboard of what will happen in their story. Finally, they can create the story animation using a tool like GoAnimate, Kerpoof Movie, Zimmer Twins or an app like Sock Puppets or ToonTastic.

Tips: The stories on Story Math take a few minutes to load. They are flash based and require a little patience for the first load.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Story Math in your classroom.

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Kerpoof: Make a StoryBook

April 27, 2010April 27, 2010Kelly Tenkely12 Comments20510 views

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.

Kerpoof: Update

January 29, 2010February 8, 2010Kelly Tenkely9 Comments3893 views

What it is: Kerpoof is one of my favorite creation tools for elementary students, it allows them to draw, create pictures, cards, books, and even movies. My original post about Kerpoof can be found here. Kerpoof has added some new features that make it worthy of another post. Students can now save their pictures, cards, stories and drawings locally (on their computers). On each canvas is a JPEG icon that will allow any picture to be saved to the computer locally. They are working on making it possible to download the movies locally soon. Kerpoof also introduced info bubbles. In the Make a Picture object library, students can drag out a picture onto the canvas. Now there is a new question mark button that shows up on an object. When students click on the question mark, a little bubble of information pops up. Students will gain all kinds of information from these little fact bubbles. They can learn everything from: who wrote Treasure Island, to learning the national animal of Australia.

How to integrate Kerpoof into the classroom: Kerpoof is an outstanding creativity program for the classroom. With there education accounts and these new features, it is even more useful in the classroom setting. Now that students can save their pictures created on Kerpoof locally, they can use their Kerpoof creations in new ways. Upload the saved JPEG to the class website, blog, or wiki, or add illustrations to a word processing program.

Use the new information bubbles to start a Kerpoof scavenger hunt. Ask students specific questions ahead of time or instruct students to research broader topics like “dinosaurs” or “Mexico”. After students have found answers to their assigned questions, they can do more in-depth research using library or Internet resources. After research is completed, students can come back to Kerpoof to create a picture, story, essay, or movie including information that they learned.

Tips: Be sure to check out Kerpoof’s lesson plans, they have just added a new lesson called “Programming Wizards” designed to teach students about how computers work and how to build, design, and test a program. Very cool.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Kerpoof in your classroom.