Each month we will be highlighting a #MashoftheMonth, this will focus on a tool or application within Purple Mash and how it can be used within the classroom to support learning across the curriculum. During the month, if you share how you have used #MashoftheMonth, you will then be entered into a draw to win a 2Simple Goody Bag!

January’s #MashoftheMonth is 2Create a Story (2CAS). 2Create a Story allows children to create their own multimedia digital storybooks. There are three modes of 2Create a Story: My Simple Story, My Story and My Adventure Story.

My Simple Story has a simplified user interface with fewer drawing tools, fewer animations and sounds and no background button. This is to make creating books easier for younger children. My Story includes added features such as backgrounds and sound recording. My Adventure Story includes the functionality to create non-sequential links between pages and animate characters.

2CAS is used within our computing scheme of work for Unit 1.6, producing an animated story book and Unit 2.8 presenting ideas. Although, 2CAS is not just for computing and has many uses across the curriculum as children are able to combine words, pictures, sounds and animation to create engaging stories in minutes.  You could ask the children to create their own, or start a story and set the finishing of it as a 2Do? You could then share your stories via your school website, via a display board or via 2Blog. The video below is a quick guide to creating an eBook with 2CAS, this could be linked to any topic work or as a way for children to create an eBook all about their favourite hobby or use it as a way of sharing favourite recipes.

In an adventure story, children do not have to plan a sequential series of activities but they can plan a non-chronological adventure text. The story planner view enables them to see how the story flows, this assists children in planning their story. You can click on any page to go to that page. You can zoom in if you have a mouse with a zoom roller on it or if using a touch screen. When in play mode, the overview will still work to take you straight to a page of a story. This is very useful in Adventure stories when testing whether all the routes through a story work correctly as you do not have to go through the whole story each time. The video below gives an overview of setting up an adventure story.

2CAS is also a great tool to be used by teachers while remote teaching, for example they could use it to give an overview of the teaching for that day or week. Teachers have the ability to put links and even URLs into 2CAS as well being able to record instructions.

We would love to see how you use our #MashoftheMonth this month – you can either share examples via our Twitter or Facebook pages, or upload any resources in 2Create A Story you create to our resource sharing area, or email us at Commmunity@2Simple.com. All examples will be entered into our monthly draw to win a 2Simple goody bag!