Digital Drawing and Moviemaking with Kerpoof.com

David Valentine, BFA, ISTE (International Society of Technology Educators)

The Web is alive with classroom tools designed to use browser based applications.  Several are increasingly showing up as " all-in-one" multimedia programs that combine drawing, text, clip art, and authoring into a single easy to use web app. To this growing club add a little known web application that is standards based, resources rich, and a lot of fun to use.  They call it, Kerpoof!   Oh, did I mention it's FREE? (More on that later.)
    Jean Cocteau, the Surrealist artist and filmmaker famously said, "Art clarifies Science." Kerpoof certainly lends credence to that claim.
Kerpoof's designers and programmers have gone to great lengths to craft an app that can really help K-5 students design and execute thoughtful, creative projects that can "clarify" coursework assignments.
Kerfpoof uses an icon based interface that acts like a gateway to it's architecture of interactive tools. The program's tutorials are simple, step by step teaching modules that are easy to use, and reinforce learning with animated examples of each tool in action.
    The teacher resources are chock full of grade level specific lesson plans, indoor/outdoor support activities, and fully illustrated hand outs that lay the foundation for all of Kerpoof's digital projects
     A short list of it's modules include: drawing, card-making, story book authoring/illustrating and moviemaking. Moviemaking is  particularly clever and well designed. Begin by choosing a theme icon to reflect your movie narrative. Then, the screen divides into a stage area on the left, and a layered timeline on the right. Below the stage are sets of smart object icons: scenes, characters and special effects with built in actions that to which you assign time durations and drag onto the stage. As you add scene elements the timeline graphically illustrates each asset when it appears and how long it lasts. You can assign action loops, new scenes, transitions, new characters, and dialogue bubbles with a combination of mouse clicks and keyboard entries.  Each scene is fully editable. When you are finished you hit the play button and watch your narrative come alive.
Now, the fine print.
Although Kerpoof basic is a free app, its full feature sets are normally only available through a monthly subscription fee.  However, the designers of Kerpoof are very serious about It as a primetime education tool. So, teachers and education staff members can open full featured Kerpoof accounts for themselves, and their students absolutely FREE!!  The main caveat is your projects must by nature remain as educational content and not for commercial use. Please read the Terms and Agreement for more information. You register as an educator's account by using your school district email e.g. (my name@my school district .....) as your username, or (if you have a regular email account) use it as your username, and Kerpoof will subsequently ask for verification of your educator's status.  With an educator's account you can assign login privileges, monitor student content, save projects online, and let student teams collaborate in real time on individual classroom computers!

    Go to Kerpoof.com! Check out the gallery of student projects; and browse the lesson plans based on your grade level before trying out a component tutorial.  You'll get ideas, and then, you might get hooked!