Students can immediately start creating with or without an account. There are paid account subscriptions offered, but teachers are allowed to apply for free accounts that have access to the advanced features. Teachers can then create accounts for an entire class of students, giving them access to the advanced features for free, as well as manage access to certain tools, reset passwords, and monitor work. Teachers can set the level of collaboration that is allowed as many projects created by Kerpoof users are offered up for collaboration (Note: All creations are reviewed by trained moderators at Kerpoof before being shared). More teacher-features are on their way. Main activities on the site include: Creating cards, creating pictures, writing stories, and making movies. In this article, I'm going to focus on the movie making, but many of the features I describe are also used in the other activities. 
 
When students start a project, they get to choose the Storyline, which will then allow them to choose different backdrops for their story's setting. You'll notice that some of the choices say that they need to be "bought at the store." As students create, they will earn "koins" which is the currency used to buy more features from the store. Once the setting has been chosen, students will see the "Kerpoof Studio" where they can drag in different characters and objects to their setting. Each object/character has "scripts" associated with it (you'll see these load in a window called "Object Methods" when the object is selected). For instance, when selecting a character who is a Dragon, I see the choices: Move, Say, Emote, Angry, Tail Slam, and Fire. Next to the stage (where the setting and characters are), the student is able to drag one of these scripts to a "Timeline." The Timeline is where they will map out the actions for each character by placing the actions in the order that they want them to happen and setting the time for each action. There are multiple time lines so characters can be doing different things at the same time. For instance, my Dragon can breath fire while saying "Grrrr!" in a cartoon bubble. 
 
Along with setting actions for your characters, you can even set actions for the stage itself. Special effects like Showing a Title, Fading to Black, or Playing a Soundtrack can be used. Multiple scenes can be created so story lines can get pretty complex. There are plenty of characters and objects for students to choose from, and if they don't like what's offered on the screen, all they have to do is click on one of the objects and new ones will appear (with an animated "poof" -- or "kerpoof" I guess). Students can easily add text and speech bubbles to the movies. When the student finishes the movie (or any project on Kerpoof), he/she can save it and work on it again later or share the web address that has been created. 
 
Kerpoof is not only great for storytelling practice, but also gets young students started with very simple programing. Laying out the commands for characters in the timeline gets them thinking about setting up "commands" for a desired outcome. For instance, students can move objects in the scene by setting up Point A and "programming" the object to move to it by putting that command in the desired place in the timeline. 
 
There's plenty to do at Kerpoof and teachers can find lessons and connections to different state education standards as well as the National Educational Technology Standards from ISTE. 

Bob Sprankle has been a multi-age teacher in Wells, ME for 10 years and has served as the school's Technology Integrator for the past two years.

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