Dear Marsattac – Hello and good to see you here.  Thanks for your comments.

The French guidelines are very interesting though, of course, almost impossible to stick to in family where there are two or more children.   There are so many contradictions as we move forward through the digital age.  In my own son’s secondary school the new headteacher wants to find ways to use mobile phone technology in the classroom (harnassing the fact that so many kids have this powerful computers in their pockets) while the new Minister for Education is talking about a blanket ban on mobile phones in schools. 

Change in schools could take a long time.  However, in another 10 years my son’s generation will be teachers themselves; perhaps it will take a ‘born-digital’ generation to really understand the opportunities transmedia presents for education.

Thanks to Marsattac for an interesting French perspective on media and
young children. Focusing on point 3), I’d like to respond by providing
some background on the development of the Inanimate Alice project which
hopefully will answer the points raised.

At the outset, Inanimate Alice was designed as an entertainment title.
The first two episodes won awards and commendations and quickly gained
an audience. Quite soon we noticed that a large proportion of the
visitors to the website and almost all of the returning visitors were
teachers. At that point, we changed tactics to focus on education
outcomes asking Dr. Jess Laccetti, then studying creative writing and
new media, to design the Education Packs that have become such a popular
download from the website.

Feedback provided by educators downloading the packs, together with
inputs concerning the episodes themselves, has made a valuable
contribution towards our understanding of the nature of the work we are
developing. The extended time between the release of episodes has
allowed us to consider that feedback in our approach to producing
further material.

In recent months an education steering group has assembled around the
project. The group’s efforts have focused thinking and impacted our
plans for the future development of the educational materials to be
developed alongside the series.

More than ever, Inanimate Alice is becoming an entertainingly
educational title driven by the needs of and guided by the wisdom and
experience of motivated teachers. It’s hard to imagine where the project
would be today without them. 

Just saw a tweet from the Sandbox Summit that 60% of kids want to play games in which they make up the rules. Perhaps the same can be said of stories. It’s the remix, mash-up generation.

The first contact with television happens earlier and earlier. Serge Tisseron in his book “Virtuel, mon amour : penser, aimer, souffrir à l’ère des nouvelles technologies”
published by Albin Michel in 2008 mentions that before reaching age 3, a
child spends one hour a day in front of the TV screen then between one
hour thirty minutes between age 3 and 4. Acknowledging that situation in
France, the Ministry of Health broadcast messages recommending to keep
children away from TV under age 3 and asked TV channels aimed at young
children to make parents aware of potential related dangers (cf. article
“L’exposition à la télévision retarde le développement de l’enfant de moins de 3 ans” – LeMonde.fr http://bit.ly/lolIs2 ).
Regarding children’s exposure to screens, Serge Tisseron sums it up
through the 3 – 6 – 9 – 12 rule” : no screens before age 3, no video
games consoles before age 6, no Internet access before age 9, and let
your children on their own only from age 12 on.

Recently, the Kids TV report (Kids TV Report : Les enfants et la TV http://bit.ly/kDCMoL)
stated that young Europeans were increasingly watching TV. The success
of themed channels, on-demand and catch-up TV services explains that
phenomenon. The report also mentiosn the success of transmedia shows
such as Zingzilla, a musical project developped by the BBC. Certain
shows have also met with great success. “The TV watching habits of
children are evolving, both in the type of medias used and in the type
of content watched, and this is nowhere near stopping…” reports
Johanna Karsenty.

Major TV channel TF1 recently started a call for projects for a transmedia show aimed at ages 6 to 10 children, TFou Pitch
(http://www.tf1.fr/tfou-pitch/tfou-pitch-le-concept-6379878.html).
You are probable aware of similar projects in your own countries. One
can see that children are going to get used to (if they aren’t already)
transmedia programs at an ever younger age. These children are at
primary school right now and will soon join the French middle-schools.
In this respect, I want to ask you these 3 questions :

1) How is the arrival of these new generations of students used to
transmedia contents since childhood (say, around age 6) going to change
School as we know it ?

2) Pedagogical transmedia contents are
probably going to be developed in the future (in this regard, Inanimate
Alice is a good example), what should their core characteristics be ?

3) A question for Ian Harper : How have you brought the thinking of
teachers into Inanimate Alice ? What have they specifically contributed
to your work ?

Thanks to Thomas Maillioux for the translation

As I read your comment John, I was listening to Karen Cator from the United States Department of Educational Technology present.  This was something she spent a great deal of time discussing- the opportunities for changing the way that we think about literacy and learning that we have during this transition from old to new media.  She said now is the time to maximize these opportunities because of mobility, online social interactions, quality digital content, etc…

One of the more interesting points she made was that we as a learning society are at a digital inflection point- transitioning between print-based classroom materials and digital media.  At this point she mentioned transmedia as being a powerful force in moving from print to digital
and how stories across platforms help to personalize learning, offer opportunties for a much more productive environment. 

In the post-literate world John is pointing us towards, ease of access
and evolving scenarios replace the hard and fast nature of print. No
longer do we share a book or multiple copies of the same “fixed” book, with
transmedia we have multi-point connections to bodies of material that
have the potential for endless reshaping and improvement.

What excites me is the considerable “stretch” this provides for
co-creation, sharing and reaching out to the wider world. We have yet to
see how friends and family can fully share in such stories. Homework,
schoolwork and the summer recess wasteland could and should be fully
accessible by educators and parents.

The rewards from “creating your own story” out of classroom hours in
terms of decision-making, networking and collaboration are legion.
We have heard so often that, given the tools and motivation, students
jump at such opportunities. It is our job to clear the decks and let
them at it.

After posting my previous comment, I came across a great post on transmedia from Dr Pamela Rutledge on the Media Psychology blog (see: http://mediapsy.net/2011/04/transmedia-storytelling-the-reemergence-of-fundamentals/):

“The lines are blurring, not just between technologies, but also between traditional roles of producer-consumer roles. Today’s audience lives in an interactive and participatory world; they expect and demand that ability to actively engage.

Transmedia storytelling weaves together individual strands of a story into a larger and richer interactive fabric and offers the audience multiple ways to participate, through content production, collaboration, and interaction. When the story has authenticity, coherence, and integrity, it provides a common language that unleashes vast amounts of creativity and invites maximum engagement through audience participation.”

The discussion here is of a very high quality indeed and it is great to see the debate being widened to include some glances at the very nature of literacy itself in the ‘transmedia world’. As I have written on my blog on a number of occasions (http://www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/?s=%22digital+literacy%22), I believe the definition of what it means to be literate has changed considerably over the past 50 years – something that was presaged by Marshall McLuhan amongst others half a century ago in his book The Gutenberg Galaxy (http://www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/?p=2393) - and it is still changing and is likely to continue to change as our technologies for communication keep on developing.

One of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking comments on my blog came from Mhairi McAlpine, a project manager at the Scottish Qualifications Authority, in a discussion on the notion of ‘postliteracy’ (see: http://www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/?p=2251?comments). I would like to quote Mhairi’s words extensively here:

‘Maybe one way of relating post literacy and digital literacy is to look at literacy as a property not of a person but of a social environment.  That literacy is the medium through which we gain access to community knowledge.

In what would be commonly termed a “pre-literate” society, there is usually an oral tradition, where people pass down stories from generation to generation.  Literacy is the knowledge of references and the background as well as the substance of stories so that meaning can be made and community knowledge can be established. 

In a literate society, knowledge is codified through text – information can be obtained so long as you can gain access to it and can decode it according to conventions, not only reading in a functional sense.  Literacy is skills that give access to community knowledge encoded according to shared conventions.

In a post literate society, knowledge is all encompassing and accessible through technological tools which can present it in a variety of ways.  Literacy is the ability to work the tools needed to present community knowledge in a manner which can be decoded by the individual.

Digital literacy is to a post literate society what reading is to a literate society and story telling is to a pre-literate society.”

I wonder therefore to what extent the potential of transmedia as a learning tool relates directly to the changing nature of the social environment in which we now find ourselves living, an environment in which so many of the narratives that have meaning today have shifted inexorably towards complex, cross-media channels for communication. As Bill Boyd states here – and I agree with him – these shifts do not mean that visual literacy is somehow displacing the need to understand and create meaningful text – but they are certainly extending our notion of what literacy is, to include a host of other channels and narrative components alongside text.

The ability to read, write and speak will always be a critical element of literacy, but transmedia is showing us the way to an understanding of how that element can be combined powerfully and meaningfully with all of the other elements that can be used: image, video, sound, gaming, haptic and so on.

Hi Soryahh,

I quite agree that transmedia texts are inclusive, and do allow people whose strengths lie in visual literacy to participate on more equal terms. However, I don’t believe that transmedia spells the end of printed text, nor that it should. Inanimate Alice, for example, includes a progressively more difficult written text from one episode to the next. Unlike conventional texts, though, young learners are drawn in and have an additional ‘incentive’ to read it. It is often when someone with learning difficulties such as dyslexia, is faced with an unbroken wall of written or printed text that he or she is deflated.

I think this is an excellent point. It’s easy to get mesmerized by the new shiny toys, and I LOVE the digital storytelling and gaming that’s emerging. But, absolutely, transmedia storytelling can be no-tech and low-tech, low-cost and no-cost, which makes it very accessible for schools and informal education groups.

There are some terrfiic projects emerging out of the experimental theater world, I’m discovering. If your core story is a live action performance, to take one example, there are a number of ways to draw out the characters, events, themes.

My sister (middle school teacher) and I created a Living Tableau activity for historic events such as the Boston Tea Party. It’s a theater exercise in which kids read aloud some of the primary source descriptions of the event. Then, they take on a character and improvise the action sequences as a troupe, silently. At key points, the director says, “Stop!” and everyone freezes. The idea is to note what you’re doing, what others are doing, what’s happening, what’s about to happen, and what the mood/feeling is. Then, the action continues, stops again, continues until a finale tableau at the dramatic climax.

To extend that activity into other media (brainstorming here), you could:

add a news broadcast (live, fake, or taped; radio/sound or video or reporter-on-the-street) to the event, including side interviews and pre- post-event commentary, weather reports, etc

have spectators/passers-by live-tweet (for fake or real) or comment/discuss via IM

ask actors to write a journal entry or letter to a friend afterward (in character) to flesh out motivations and feelings, then compare notes

have teams on each side of the issue draw storyboards for a potential movie (on paper or using tech tools, whatever’s easiest), which would explore point of view and bias

hold a mock trial of the guy caught stealing from the ship

invent a taxation game (board game, card game, video game—whatever works)

make a taxation infographic (on paper or interactive), for the data crunchers in the class.

The educators in this forum could better determine what works in a classroom, is feasible, ties to the curriculum, and also how to facilitate or direct these activities. We education writers used to label these kinds of activities “extensions,” which were usually optional or assigned as extra credit. But one exciting goal of transmedia is to make them fully integral pieces of a unified lesson which, in this on-the-fly example, centers on one tight, action-packed, emotionally rich, historically complex core story.

(PS This is not quite a shameless plug, since our books are out of print and we aren’t receiving another dime, but Louise and I wrote: 15 Primary Source Activities: American History and Great American History Games, two Scholastic titles that take a creative, multimedia approach to social studies.)

This what I love so much about transmedia and education.  Not only do these techniques leverage the stregths of each platform but they cater to the strengths of each learner.  A carefully designed and implemented transmedia production would take into account the needs of all of our learners allowing them to immerse themselves in the content and making it easier for them to absorb and retain information.

Further to Laura’s comments on Simon’s question to the group, we have seen specific examples of schools and libraries in high-poverty areas using the series ‘out of hours’ in order to engage kids who would otherwise be on the street.

In my view it is not about the technology, as resources are almost always to be found if the need is an imperative. Transmedia needs to be as compelling and eagerly anticipated as Saturday morning pictures, weekly comics or the next graphic novel were for previous generations.

This has been a great thread and has made me think through why I am so interested in Digital fiction, Transmedia or Transliteracy. As a dyslexic and someone who works with people with learning difficulties, I like the idea of working in a non-text based world. Often learning is about planning and building but if this has to be written you leave behind half the learners before they start a project. If we are allowed to see and plan in images, sound, pattern and movement we are so much happier. However now I want to create a way for students to do this.

Wonderful to see you joining the discussion Marsattac.  As a librarian myself, I also agree with you that we have an important part to play in all of this.  Acquiring the materials to support literacy across platforms, while also teaching the necessary skills for students to be able to effectively consume the content and also become producers of content themselves.

I’d like to steer the discussion in another
direction, if possible.

Conceptually, we are rooting for transmedia
because we think it the best means through which to reach kids on their level,
to ignite their curiosity, to encourage collaborative learning, to develop
inter-disciplinary education, to dilute educator/learner boundary and “to
gamify” their educational experiences.

Of course technology is developing more
fluid channels for this to be realized and, as Hilary William argues, our
children’s domestic and social landscape is so digitally saturated that schools
simply have to be too if they stand any chance of connecting.  

But we must be cautious not to become slaves
to technology. We can achieve many of these conceptual convictions without it.
It doesn’t require It doesn’t require Apple or Microsoft to sponsor a summer
camp in order to educate our kids in exciting ways.

How much can we achieve without technology?

Is “transmedia” a generational
manifestation of “informal education”?

I don’t ask these questions as a Luddite,
more as one concerned that we will overlook the presently practicable in our
frantic attempts to fit our conceptual shapes into these in-flux spaces.