Do You Miss Kerpoof? Try These 31 Alternatives

Kerpoof closed down April 15, 2014. A staple in thousands of classrooms across the country, it is sorely missed by not just students, but teachers who relied upon it to guide students through writing, spelling, and a mixture and text and pictures to communicate ideas.

It’s pretty much a given that no one site could replace all the experiences Kerpoof provided, educators can cobble together a collection to satisfy the hole left by Kerpoof’s demise. Here are some ideas:

Mix Art and Text

1. KidPix (fee-based)
2. Paint (available through Windows)
3. Tuxpaint (free software download)

Drawing

1. Draw.to
2. Graffiti Creator
3. Sketchpad
4. SumoPaint
5. Tessellate

Writing–Comics

1. Comic Creator–Boy’s Life
2. Comic creator–Bubblr
3. Comic creator–Garfield
4. Comic creator–ReadWriteThink
5. Comics, newspapers, posters—learn to create
6. Make Believe Comix
7. Writing with comics

Stories

1. Bookr—create stories from photos
2. Create a story
3. Little Bird Tales–upload drawings, add student voice to them–K, 1 best
4. StoryBird—-storytelling with art–beautiful
5. StoryJumper–build a book

Words

1. Spelling practice—use with spelling words
2. TagCrowd
3. Visuwords
4. Vocabulary Fun
5. Word Central—from Merriam

One more–visit this crowd-sourced Symbaloo of options for Kerpoof.

That’s a start. None of those above do everything Kerpoof does, but teachers are resilient. We’ll figure a way to make this work.

Here’s a collection of drawings done using some of the sites above:

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice reviewer, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today and TeachHUB, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

updated 12-23-18