I’ve been putting off writing about Kerpoof until I had some solid student samples and a lot to say about it.  The students have been using Kerpoof since mid-November, mainly in grades 3-6 (though all grades K-6 have been on the program at some point).  We finally finished up some projects today and are sadly bidding goodbye to Kerpoof (at least in the lab).  What a treat!

So, what is Kerpoof?

This website/internet application is a comprehensive children’s art community.  In Kerpoof, students can make pictures, drawings, movies, cards, and stories.  An account is not needed in order to create and print, but with accounts, students can save all work in their own galleries.  They can print and email their work, as well as sharing it on a group message board.  From the message board, students can even rate each other’s work with a stars rating system in addition to leaving comments.  Students even have the option to select classmates’ work as a “favorite.”  This stores favorite art in the student’s gallery.  Lastly, students even have the option to collaborate with each other to create art and stories.

At the very basic level, Kerpoof is a place for kids to be creative and have fun, learning a bit of digital citizenship along the way.  Today, students in a third grade class were able to communicate via the class message board with a former transferred classmate who was at home and on his computer at the same time his former class was in the lab and on Kerpoof.  They were able to strike up a conversation with him, and eventually it became an exchange of artwork in which he and his former classmates expressed how much they missed each other.

Ultimately, it is a highly interactive website where students are not only deeply involved in a creative process, but they are thinking critically and problem solving; indeed, (in making movies) they are even programming using sprites, time lines, coinciding action events, angles of rotation, and waypoint mapping.

Two of the best things about Kerpoof–teachers have a wealth of lesson plans and idea prompts, and it’s FREE!  Having no software for our lab to start off the year, I was in a panic.  As readers of my blog will know, I’ve been searching high and low for quality FREE applications, and sharing them here.  Kerpoof is a brilliant idea, and free for educators and their students, which makes it even that much better.

For a better look at it, view a screencast I made here.

I will post a great lesson here soon for intermediate grades, but I just wanted to include a bit about the program in my blog.  I hope anyone reading this–teacher, student, parent–will discover what wonders and enjoyment can be garnered from Kerpoof, but also will appreciate the educational value of this program.  A few teachers at my school are already incorporating it into lessons!  This has been a fantastic couple of months in the lab.  Be sure to take a look at the page Kerpoof has for teachers.  This includes lesson plans, e-mail newsletters, correlation to national and state standards, and everything you need to know about Kerpoof to get the ball rolling!