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Set a Reminder Details >GETideas.org creates events that provide the opportunity to collaborate, share ideas, and comment on transformational topics in education. Our Virtual Roundtables employ the latest online collaboration tools, from threaded conversations to webinars to Google+ hangouts. Our goal is to inspire and inform.
Join our hosts the week of March 26 for a Virtual Roundtable discussion on Transmedia in Education:
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Lucas Johnson, Silverstring Media |
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Simon Pulman, Starlight Runner Entertainment |
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Jeff Gomez, Starlight Runner Entertainment |
Expand your knowledge and network! Join this week-long discussion to exchange
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76 Responses to Virtual Roundtable: Transmedia in Education – How and Why?
We all know the power storytelling has for teaching students about the world in which they live. With the advent of Transmedia individuals can now weave together diverse storylines, across multiple media outlets, as parts of an overarching narrative structure. Given this:
• If young children entering school are accustomed to Transmedia content from a very early age, how might this change schooling as we know it?
• What would you say to Education Administrators and practitioners who may be unmoved or reluctant to seriously consider Transmedia in the context of teaching and learning?
• What lessons do you think educators might take from successful commercial Transmedia franchises aimed at children?
To lay a little groundwork here from my perspective, there are a couple of (interrelated) ways to conceive of “transmedia storytelling” in education.
The first is the process of teaching through a specifically-crafted transmedia narrative or storyworld. I know that Laura Fleming is a big advocate of Inanimate Alice, so I’m hoping she’ll respond to speak to that particular project. I was also highly impressed by the case study illustrating the use of Rob Pratten’s Conductr software in Florida; you can look at the case study at http://www.tstoryteller.com/transmedia-in-education and I’m very hopeful that Rob will contribute his insight to this discussion. These kinds of transmedia stories use the power of multiple-platform narrative to teach about specific subjects, engage students with story, and help develop problem solving and collaborative abilities in small groups.
The second definition of “transmedia education” conceives of the notion a little more expansively by taking the view that virtually every area of learning is now “transmedia” by necessity. The digital revolution means that there are few topics that cannot be explored in more depth outside the classroom by doing additional research online. Kids are, of course, already doing this for things they love. They might seek out online interviews with their favorite NBA players, read up on the backstory of a beloved book series, or discuss a rock band online. This can occur at home, on the way to school, or even during lunch break. Kids therefore need to be encouraged to apply these skills to education, so that they can devote the same passion to thinking critically about history or science, or making friends online to practice their French or Spanish. My understanding that this is not happening on a wide level yet, because many kids view the classroom as for learning, and the internet at home for entertainment.
At any rate, there are three key skills that I think both kinds of “transmedia learning” above can help to develop:
1. Critical thinking. This is hugely important, and not a major strength of education in America today. With a multitude of available media and perspectives, kids need to be able to evaluate biases, see problems from different perspectives, and examine the credibility of a source. This kind of media literacy is just as valuable – or moreso – to a young graduate today as the ability to learn and regurgitate facts and figures.
2. Communication. Kids are going to be communicating with the world through multiple channels. It’s inevitable – Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, face-to-face, phone, email. Thus, they need to be taught how to do so. In my view, there are both “defensive” and “proactive” components to this. The first step is defensive- teaching kids how to use these tools in a way that will prevent them from doing or saying something that they will regret and is out there forever. It’s a problem new to their generation. The second is proactive, and where “transmedia storytelling” comes in – building your personal brand, and relationships, through the artful use of multiple platforms. My hope is that Jeff will speak to this.
3. Collaboration. Today’s job market stresses collaboration in rapid paced environments. Transmedia storytelling is collaborative and participatory by design. At Starlight Runner, we build large scale entertainment implementations with the understanding that audiences will want to talk back and, in some instances, work together to put the pieces of a story together. This can be cross-applied to education. Again, I think Rob Pratten will have some smart things to say here, as well as Lucas who has done some wonderful collaborative things with his property Azrael’s Stop.
Those are a few initial thoughts from myself. With regard to how I’d like to see this discussion develop, I must first disclaim that I’m not a trained educator or an expert in the field. With that said, I’m really interested in ideas for (a) how these techniques can be implemented at scale and in a manageable way for most teachers (I don’t think transmedia is a magic bullet, but I do think it could help underprivileged kids in America and elsewhere); and (b) how transmedia storytelling could be used as a carrot to encourage more investment and innovation from the private sector – because I believe that change is more likely to come from a hungry, disruptive company than a slow moving and risk-averse government. But again, my views are not set in stone so I’m excited to see where the discussion leads.
Simon
I’m completely with you on the the three Cs (Culture too ?).
The focus on transmedia in education has so far been largely on “reading” or participating in transmedia texts and I’m really excited by the possibilities of students creating transmedia texts. The tools are becoming available to allow this to happen – though there are the frustrations of filtering, registration etc. which mean we are using Google Apps as a kind of walled garden presently…
http://www.digitalglue.org/
TRANSMEDIA: REMOVING FRICTION FROM LEARNING
Some of us have seen the YouTube video of the young child who is given a magazine, and who tries to manipulate the images on the page with his finger only to realize with frustration that nothing is going to move as it does on his iPad. Others have heard the story about the little girl watching a Tinker Bell DVD, who instinctively clicks her pointer finger on the cushion of the couch, hoping to get a closer look at the Home Tree in Pixie Hollow. It will be a while before the data is collected and science draws its conclusions, but it is my belief that kids fortunate enough to be exposed to technology such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops at a very early age are learning faster and making connections, subtle and overt, that stimulate observation and contextualization at greater rates of speed. If nothing else, this exposure is granting these children a facility with the very technology that will be a natural aspect of their everyday world the way that books, newspapers, radio and television were to ours.
What I find continually shocking is how often I encounter parents who believe this exposure to be undesirable at the least and repulsive at most. “Why force my baby to grow up too fast?” I hear. “The device was made for adults; it’s foolish to put it in the hands of a child. Better a stuffed animal or wooden choo-choo.” But what many of us are failing to understand is that we as a people are experiencing a paradigm shift as great (if not more so) as the advent of the telephone or television. Our children are growing up in an age of pervasive communication, where we are absorbing information from dozens and dozens of sources, sometimes two or three screens at a time, and where each of us is capable of responding to that stimuli, impacting both how we are perceived and what we take from a given experience. Why not give children the tools they’ll need to navigate this chaos, the way we were given picture books and talking toys? To do any less (if we can at all help it) is to place them at a relative disadvantage.
In fact, with the advent of tablets such as the iPad, for the first time in history, there is nothing to learn in order for us to access information or content. We don’t need to know what a mouse is, we don’t have to get the concept of folders, we don’t even need to know where the “off” button is. We see, we touch, we swipe, that’s it. The child does not have to grapple with the physicality of the book. There are no lost flash cards or puzzle pieces. Information is not limited by the scope of knowledge or language barrier of the parent or guardian. So the “friction” that comes with learning is vastly reduced.
Some of you may know that I’m a transmedia storyteller, which means that I work with big movie studios, video game companies and publishers to help them extend their intellectual properties — their “story worlds” — across a variety of traditional and digital platforms. In a way, my company Starlight Runner Entertainment, helps our clients to reduce friction on a global level, allowing for millions of people to access different facets of their story worlds in unique ways, no matter what gadget they may be using. The messages, themes and aspirational elements of those worlds retain their integrity, because we study and understand them, clarifying them for our clients so that each piece of content will carry them, maintaining consistency and continuity. You might say we have been very successful at this, as the practice is being adapted in media conglomerates and advertising agencies across the globe. To me this only makes friction-free transmedia practice even more imperative in childhood education.
It’s not enough for us to hand our babies iPads. We need to reassess our approach and the way we design our curricula in order to link these screens, and these screens with the blackboard and books that are still a part of our children’s lives. We need to understand how information flows from one media platform to the next, so that we can design interactive experiences that integrate the devices and the digital connective tissue that links them in concentric circles around us. We need to build surf boards out of apps, so that students can glide across the chaotic waves of content and information that show no signs of cresting. We must remove friction from learning, and this conversation is as good a start as any!
Jeff Gomez
CEO
Starlight Runner Entertainment
@jeff_gomez
Zeitgeist!
In an ongoing conversation that started on my blog and that I typed just before reading Jeff’s piece I wrote “the best tools are both digital glue and digital lubrication”… spooky…
Apropos choo-choos and cuddlies I liked ze Franks comment on his TED vid – http://bit.ly/HcH7Pp – “On street corners everywhere, people are looking at their cell phones, and it’s easy to dismiss this as some sort of bad trend in human culture. But the truth is life is being lived there”.
Part of transmedia storytelling to me is the acknowledgement by storytellers that people do not live their lives a single medium* at a time—we are constantly immersing ourselves across multiple media, interacting online and in “real life”, reading and watching and listening and touching. And in our lives, we see no barriers in this behaviour—it simply is. As Simon and Jeff have pointed out, this is all the more true for kids right now, who are growing up in a world in which there is no real divide between physical and digital, who accept it all as one.
So to extend this understanding to education is to meet kids where they already are, rather than forcing them into a structure they are not comfortable with. It’s engaging them through digital media and making them part of the conversation rather than one-way didactic lecturing.
I think Simon’s points are really key here, so I’ll address a couple of those specifically. Much of today’s education is based on rote learning rather than critical thinking. We need to put kids into situations in which they must not just answer questions on a paper, but must come to their own conclusions based on their interactions with others and the information presented to them. Stories in general can spark discussion of choices, reactions, unfamiliar points of view, and the relation to the real world. Transmedia is the careful extension of that beyond just the book, giving kids the opportunity to experience it with every sense and become more fully immersed. Making that story truly interactive and bringing the actions and reactions of the kids into it allows them to exercise that critical thinking first hand.
Our world is increasingly global and cosmopolitan, and empathic understanding of others is critical. Robot Heart Stories is one transmedia education project that I think does this very well—it put two at-risk schools, one in French-speaking Montreal, and one in English-speaking California, in close contact as they helped a robot travel across the continent and ultimately return to space. They got to gain an understanding not only of each other, but of the global community that came together as part of the story. Self-expression is another vital part of that communication Simon mentioned—allowing kids to create within the framework of a story, and to choose what they want to focus on in their learning based on their interests.
Jeff’s point regarding a continuity of theme is vital as well. Every aspect of a transmedia learning experience, whatever that really looks like (and the terms are vague enough for there to be a lot of variation) needs to be able to circle back to learning and critical thinking. Every piece should expand the horizons of the child and encourage them to push farther—to continue their learning at home and beyond, not because they have to, but because it’s exciting and interesting and gives them value.
I think Simon’s also right that we must address these issues is a way that is accessible to the average teacher, whose resources are already slim, and that we can’t rely on slow-moving policy changes to do it. To that end, I’ve been involved with Laura Fleming and Karen Wehner (my business partner on the Time Tribe, a transmedia adventure story for kids which encourages critical thinking and discovering history) to generate a blueprint for a ‘transmedia classroom’. I’m sure this week’s conversation will help that.
Lucas J.W. Johnson
http://silverstringmedia.com
http://thetimetribe.com
*I use the term loosely, as it has come to be used to describe any means by which we have an experience or receive information.
As I mentioned above I’m in the middle of a project where students are working in teams to create transmedia stories using free tools with Google Apps for Education at the heart of the process. To wise myself up I’ve been building a transmedia puzzle/mystery using the same tools- http://sg.sg/zXsVwK. – So far the biggest technical problem has been the filters imposed by our ISP which prevent real-time use of many social networks – including facebook, youtube and twitter and I suspect this may also be something of a problem in many areas in the USA too, especially with younger learners.
Social networks are useful for community and communication, but certainly not necessary to a good transmedia experience. Maybe create a forum or a wiki to let your students interact and communicate and build cooperatively. A wiki is also great for developing a co-created database of information about the storyworld they are dealing with.
What is the goal your transmedia story? What are students learning from participating in it, and what are they learning by creating their own?
We found Edmodo useful as a platform through which students can work together as well as access the resources necessary for making their way through the story: edmodo.com
Simple question, tricky to answer! The goals are I suppose: for students to collaborate, to orchestrate skills they have previously learned, to engage with e-safety issues by creating transmedia for others, to evaluate work prior to publication. And that’s just for starters. Possibly a burden too heavy for one project to bear, but we’re in a unique position for playful experimentation as the school closes next term – so that’s also what we’re about!
My own story http://sg.sg/zXsVwK is primarily intended as an exemplar and thus attempts to pack in as many different kinds of media as possible and allows discussion of the effectiveness of the different media in specific contexts . It also exemplifies what might be achieved with the tools that the students have available and with which they are reasonably familiar. It’s intended as a learning challenge to myself too, to create an interesting and engaging narrative from material that is important (safe passwords and online identity) but that I’ve taught really badly over the last few years!
Lastly I’m moving into a post in a High school with the brief of using media to create links between disciplines and the sectional nature of transmedia texts could allow cross-faculty collaboration with narrative as the key linking factor.
In addition to the insight Lucas provides, I would like to suggest social networks that are geared towards our youngest learners…Everloop, for example. http://www.everloop.com/
Not come across Everloop – will investigate. Thanks!
Lucas, regarding the classroom blueprint (http://silverstringmedia.com/2012/03/06/blueprint-for-a-transmedia-classroom/), how can interested educators get involved with shaping it, and what’s your thought on how you and Karen will formalize and trial run it? Do you have an idea of a timeline for assembling a first iteration, and are you seeking sponsorship or other forms of support for the endeavor?
Right now Karen Laura and I are still in very early stages, just trying to drum up discussions like this and through the #tmlearn hashtag to help figure out what it should look like. As far as formalizing it, I’m thinking a resource manual of some kind for teachers, with guidelines, ideas, examples, and resources.
It’s still very early for all of that, but they’re all things we will want to be thinking about moving forward.
in addition, i am EAGER to develop a prototype of sorts of what i envision to be a transmedia LearningWorld, which i view differently than just a transmedia property being used in schools.
Now that Jeff and Lucas have posted their initial thoughts (and I’m going to comment on both at some point this week), here are my initial reactions to Mary Anne’s questions:
• If young children entering school are accustomed to Transmedia content from a very early age, how might this change schooling as we know it?
I think Jeff already addressed this question quite well. Educators and administrators are facing a big fork in the road. We’ve all seen the video of the baby trying to “interact” with a magazine; it’s possible that the conventional classroom environment will seem just as quaint to that generation when it reaches school-age. The worst case scenario is that digital natives are unable to engaging with conventional linear content and teaching methods, creating a generation of kids who are entirely unenthused by education. However, there are a lot of behavioral, economic, and technological questions to answer before we can address that issue.
For instance, it seems likely that tablet devices will become cost-effective for the classroom in the next ten to fifteen years. However, how do we provide and control content? Every school will need broadband, and presumably some method for ensuring that pupils stay “on task.” But by the same token, to constrain the sense of vital curiosity that transmedia storytelling encourages would defeat the point. It’s a dilemma, and I sense that the solution lies by putting a focus on digital behavior and etiquette – a new classroom code of conduct, if you will. Implementing that universally will be extremely tough, however, and I have a lot of sympathy for the people trying to solve these problems in a practical, implementable fashion.
• What would you say to Education Administrators and practitioners who may be unmoved or reluctant to seriously consider Transmedia in the context of teaching and learning?
I have a lot of appreciation and respect for everybody who devotes themselves to education. I also understand that these behavioral changes can be intimidating, so I absolutely understand a degree of trepidation on the part of administrators and practitioners. In fact, a “wait-and-see” policy may be the best one right now, to allow educators to see how this all shakes up before committing major resources to pursuing a course of action. With that said, here are some thoughts.
Whether they call it “transmedia” or not is irrelevant to me. The bottom line is that digital literacy and the ability to fluently communicate across multiple platforms will be major economic drivers for the US as it attempts to compete globally, along with being essential components of any job search. Simply put, educators and administrators who don’t move quickly to incorporate digital learning and cross-platform critical thinking into the curriculum are doing a disservice to their students.
When you’re thinking about middle class and affluent students, there’s no argument here. Those students that can combine intelligence and professional competence with the ability to create business value, build a competitive advantage through information gathering and processing, sell services, and solve problems through digital will win. That’s almost a given.
What educators might not appreciate, however, is that cross-platform literacy is a route to social mobility for less affluent students. No longer do they have to rely on an underfunded local library or school system to learn. Once you give them the tool – the skill of cross-platform learning – they have access to a great amount of wisdom, the experience of experts, and peer interaction at their fingertips. Of course, there are challenges to this (broadband and device availability, training, investment), but that’s an issue that corporations and government could choose to address. Naturally, there are more complex societal, economic and political issues attached to this, which go beyond the scope of this roundtable.
• What lessons do you think educators might take from successful commercial Transmedia franchises aimed at children?
This comes down, to some degree, on how you define “transmedia.” As I mentioned in my original post, there are already successful projects that are teaching through a “single, cross-platform narrative.” There is significant potential in this format, particularly when targeting one specific area of study. For example, I would love to see somebody create a transmedia story designed to teach financial literacy since the events of 2008 onwards have proven that it’s an area where the general populace is relatively deficient. You could create an interactive story to illustrate how banks, mortgages and credit cards work, and best practices for personal finance (note: I would prefer if the piece were politically neutral). There are also obvious applications in the area of health and public policy.
Looking at the larger entertainment franchises, I think a good maxim is “segment your content to find your audience where it lives.” Ideally, you provide different entry points to a story and experience that target different demographics or styles of learning. While I wouldn’t consider it transmedia in the purest sense, the recent digital marketing campaign for The Hunger Games did this quite well by – for instance – targeting fashion-conscious fans through its Capitol Couture blog.
In a similar vein, Prometheus seems to be segmenting on a scale of “involvedness” – fans can get immersed in the scavenger hunt aspects of the campaign, but they don’t have to. In the education space, it’s conceivable that transmedia storytelling could be used to “coax” interest in a subject, almost like a Trojan horse.
Lucas mentioned Robot Heart Stories as a great global project and I think there’s definitely potential for creating transmedia stories that bring together students across the world. In that event, they both have localized content that draws them into a bigger, universal story. This is something that Starlight Runner is exploring on the brand/major IP side of things.
As a final note, I think it’s important to understand that kids seem to “get” these ideas quite intuitively. The things that we stress to clients as being important – consistently high quality across platforms, the absence of schism and contradiction in cross-platform stories, the inclusion of “chase elements” that encourage kids to explore a property on a different platform, the validation of fan content and contribution – all seem to be understood (or even demanded) by millennial audiences.
Regarding what I would say to Education Administrators and practitioners who may be unmoved or reluctant to seriously consider transmedia in the context of teaching and learning, well, I should note that I was a school teacher way back in the day and I have an understanding of the deep conservatism and slowness of progress that characterizes our education system. As a public speaker and transmedia educator today, however, I travel the world teaching these techniques and have a growing concern over how the United States is slipping behind in terms of digital and multi-platform student engagement.
Canada has enacted several laws and restructured entire funding processes to encourage — even insist upon the development and production of content across multiple media platforms. When I asked government and funding officials why they’ve done this, their response is simple and direct: “We need to usher our children into the 21st century by giving them digital literacy and the ability to navigate an array of methods of communication. By spreading our narratives across different media touchpoints, we are enabling our audience to stay competitive in a rapidly changing world.”
Canada is not alone. Australia, Brazil and the United Kingdom are all developing multi-platform funding entities, and considering modifications to their education curricula to accommodate greater and more well-rounded digital literacy. But there is another, perhaps more imperative reason that the United States must keep up: that of upward mobility.
Many have lamented that the United States is no longer a manufacturer and supplier of “things” to itself and the rest of the world. If what we have left to offer is digital, that’s fine. The world’s population is certainly going to grow to value digital content. But then it behooves us to make certain that our children are the finest conceivers, designers, architects, maintainers and producers of said content. They need not only to understand a specific area of this space, but all of it. They need to understand how to navigate it and how intellectual property can be developed and extended across it. They need to possess digital literacy, but greater wealth and status and power will come with transmedia literacy.
Jeff Gomez
CEO
Starlight Runner Entertainment
@jeff_gomez
Jeff, I completely agree with the US ed system being conservative and slow. In countries around the world, particularly Austrailia, they have embedded Inanimate Alice into the curriculum due to powerful metadata indexing that has allowed Alice to be discoverable across all edu websites and territory portals in the country. The US has one educational repository after the next and Alice has spread here through more of a grassroots approach. In the end, Alice has followers in over 100 countries and continues to grow. As I said in another post, due to the web and social media, teachers and students are now curators of content and can, on their own, seek out and embrace quality transmedia properties which will force administrators and practitioners to stand up and take notice.
Jeff, Simon and Lucas have laid out a remarkably lucid commentary on the value and impact of transmedia in education. In particular, I think Simon hit the nail squarely on the head with his 3 C’s, Jeff adroitly outlined the new rules of pervasive communications that our your “digital natives” are growing up with, and Lucas makes a strong point that didactic lecturing goes against the nature of how children today consume content.
My background is in business as opposed to education or entertainment, so perhaps I can add a bit to the conversation from that perspective. I always like to start an answer with a question. So I ask, what is the fundamental role and purpose of education?
While some would say “to develop well-rounded, knowledgeable adults who can participate in society,” and others might say to develop skills to allow productive participation in the workforce, it’s clear we look at education as a means to prepare our children to thrive as adults.
So what do you need to thrive as an adult in the digital era? When I talk to businesses about success factors I focus on what I call PET: Proactivity, Engagement and Transparency. These involve skills that include listening and filtering, multi-lateral conversations and collaboration, and making it easy for others to vet you or your business through open narrative.
What I see as a potential disruptive impact of transmedia in education is an evolution from the 3 R’s (Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic) to teaching our children these very skills that form the basis of PET.
Alan Berkson
Principal
The Intellgist Group
@berkson0
I agree with your PET suggestion Alan, and I think the differing perspectives towards the purpose of education that you present are extremely useful.
Here’s my next question for you (and to all participants): how would one communicate the importance of these ideas to a struggling teacher in a difficult district? Is it naive to think that they will resonate with somebody whose main priority is to keep kids in school and reading to a basic level? Or can transmedia actually be a tool for accomplishing these goals?
Simon, I again must refer to the important work of PBS KIDS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). As I mentioned in another post, they are doing some very significant work in the area of transmedia learning. Through a government grant, their work is actually targeted to underserved communities and have had much success in collaborating with community-based organizations such as Head Start to make resources including apps available at no cost to help increase access to educational children’s content. In addition, it has always been my belief that transmedia properties can use the standards as the foundation of a central story aimed at producing academic gains.
Laura, you refer to the goal of producing academic gains. What’s your thought on how the gains yielded by initiatives like those of PBS and the CPB can be tested? Do you think that they will be aiming to produce gains on standardized tests that are already in place, or assessing progress through some other metric or testing system?
To respond to your question directly, Simon, I think the benefit of a transmedia story that focuses on proactivity and engagement is in fact that it will help encourage kids to get involved in their learning, reading, and staying in school. Make them excited about what they’re doing by getting away from the rote learning and testing they’re accustomed to, and the results will follow, no?
I got caught up in the world of media education because it was seeking to address what seemed to me to be important issues in the UK education system – an overemphasis on: de-contextualised skills, print texts, summative assessment of individuals combined with an almost complete lack of recognition of the power of new media – an ocean most students are afloat in.
It seems to me these issues are also partly responsible for alienating our students from school. Reading and writing must have a purpose and audience to resonate with young learners and the creation of transmedia texts is a powerful way to provide them.
For me, transmedia storytelling lies at the intersection of narrative, gaming and social media. This is because our aim as a company is to help our clients create engaging experiences.
In the Florida case study we worked with a local production company, Doubletake Studios, who themseleves worked with educators to ensure the engaging experience we created would fit with the learning requirements of the course(s) – ethics and financial responsibility.
Please read the case study presentation or watch the video before continuing to read – Simon gives the link in his opening post.
I agree with all that’s been said above but where our approach may be different is in using gaming mechanics to encourage participation. For example, on day 6 of our 18 day experience, a student is contacted by a fictional whistleblower who reveals the payload of their rocket was overweight and the rocket should nevr have been launched! The impact of this knowledge – which arrives via email direct to their email account – could not be achieved by reading a book-basd case study.
Now the students is emotionally embedded in this world and must decide what to do with the new information: challenge it? Ignore it? Bury it? These are real life ethical issues and the students get to debate this dilemma with the teacher in the classroom. It’s no longer an abstract concept but a real problem that they experience first hand.
The students’ next step is recorded by our technology and this affects their progress through the experience from here on in. Certain information will be withheld from them, relationships severed or made – the consequences of their actions are revealed. There is no moralising or suggestion of a right and wrong answer, only consequences that the students must now deal with.
Indeed the story always steers away from black and white options and always into a grey area that demands debate amoung their team and with the teacher.
Kids and the teachers loved this experience because it was a safe simulation of real life that will better prepare the students than bookwork alone.
Oh dear my typing above is bad
I’m working from my mobile on a train – honest!
Great post Rob. Here’s a question – at what age do you think it is most appropriate to introduce kids to a case study of this nature? I’m no expert at developmental psychology, but isn’t there are threshold point at which kids begin seeing past “black and white, right and wrong” to more nuanced, complex outcomes? Does a teacher wait for that evolution to occur, or perhaps use a “game” like this to help encourage its development?
One of our concerns in constructing the Time Tribe has been wanting there to be important choices that have real consequences, but without allowing the player to do really “bad” moral things; our target age is fairly young, and we know that parents would not be happy if there’s even the possibility to lie, cheat, or steal, regardless of in-game consequences. So I think you’re right that those are issues to consider–but ways to show consequences of action despite that, encouraging real critical thinking and empathy.
To your post, Rob–I love the idea of that, where the student/player becomes emotionally invested in the ethical debate rather than simply debating a textbook entry. It makes it that much more real and thus that much more relevant and thus will actually stay with the student rather than being forgotten once the test is over.
I have mentioned it before, but I think it is worth mentioning again here as a part of this discussion. Recently, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting received a substantial ‘Ready to Learn’ grant from the US Department of Education to strengthen US-based transmedia and media literacy. Due to the apparent success of this initial initiative, Ready to Learn is now ‘pursuing the idea of combining media even further by supporting “transmedia” strategies’. They have also designed software that will track student performance across media. The results have shown is a direct link to increased student achievement and the use of transmedia techniques.
In addition, on the United States Department of Education’s Web site they have recognized the importance of using transmedia in learning and point out reasons why a transmedia approach has potential educationally. They are as follows:
* It presents children with multiple entry points to learning. Children can start learning via any one of the individual media, but when these media are interconnected, children will be motivated to explore even more;
* It enables educators to use individual media for the functions for which they are best suited. For example, games are particularly good problem-solving environments that encourage children to try difficult things without fear of failure; they are not as good as video, however, at presenting more linear and orderly information; and
* the rich, fictional worlds of transmedia tend to create a greater level of social interaction that can inspire children to create their own stories and media products and to share them with each other.
And finally, the United States Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan pointed out that the Common Core Standards have made the market ‘much more attractive for those geniuses on the entertainment side, to get into the education sector’. The business potential for transmedia as well as the educational benefits should not be overlooked. The Common Core Standards allow projects to be developed and distributed across the states as opposed to meeting different states’ standards while at the same time demonstrating that meaning and learning can powerfully coexist. The US Department of Education, through Duncan’s comments, the recent Educational Technology Plan, and the Common Core Standards are an open door inviting creators to cross through. On the most basic level- kids love stories and ache to consume them across platforms. They almost don’t understand the alternative. Spanning narrative across and weaving together the Core Common Standards will create a transmedia universe within education allowing learning to be immersive, innovative, and transformational.
Thanks Laura. This is a fantastic summary of the potential of these methods, and should really be pinned towards the top of this discussion.
Perhaps if this roundtable is formalized into a report or post-mortem of sorts, Laura’s post could be used to form the introduction.
Thank you, Simon. There are two main things I am asked most frequently about. Educators (particularly US) want to know if transmedia learning increases student achievement and transmedia creators question the opportunity within education. I hope what I have outlined above helps to clarify some of that.
This is fantastic, yeah. I definitely want to explore a point raised here, and which Simon brought up earlier — what is the opportunity for creators, for BUSINESSES to get into this space? Teachers on an individual level might not have the resources to pay for a commercial property that’s meant to be educational — is it more of a system-wide thing? In short: what’s the business model?
I’d like to point you to an article written by Ian Harper of Inanimate Alice- ‘How Transmedia Storytelling Becomes a Billion Dollar Business’.
http://publishingperspectives.com/2010/04/alice-born-digital-how-transmedia-storytelling-becomes-a-billion-dollar-business/
This article provides some insight into the scope and depth of this particular project.
There’s clearly a model in the kind of experience that Rob Pratten’s case study demonstrated. From a business standpoint, personally I would address the private market to finesse the system and software. Examples that come to mind immediately include:
- Fictional “ethics” stories/challenges for lawyers, doctors, and other professionals. You could actually build something very compelling for use by HR departments in Fortune 500 companies. Discrimination lawsuits can run in the millions and cause a massive PR backlash, but current training methods are weak.
- Damage control drills for disaster scenarios (not only environmental, but political and PR-related too). Imagine being able to run a “Margin Call” like drill for investment bank employees.
- Advanced digital skills workshops for children of high net worth individuals.
I would leverage those markets to build a company and develop software and only then approach the school space. As much as I love the “come up with a great story”/”build it and they will come” mantra, it’s not a business model – at least not a replicable one. Remember, if the goal is to coax significant investment into the sector, you probably need some combination of (a) big potential profits ($100m+); (b) tax breaks and/or government subsidies; and (c) demonstrable results. However, as Alan pointed out, a small startup is not stuck in the “innovator’s dilemma,” can pursue relatively small initial profits, and is more like to be disruptive on the whole.
” If young children entering school are accustomed to Transmedia content from a very early age, how might this change schooling as we know it?”
Schooling is going to have to change to keep up, I think. As Simon points out, there are all sorts of issues involved with this, especially for under-funded public schools, but we are living in a world that is increasingly digital, where the vast majority of information, especially for younger people, is being conveyed over the internet–in multiple formats, from text to audio to video to pictures etc. Not utilizing these technologies in school represents, to me, a failure to adequately prepare our students for life.
Using transmedia in the learning environment is one way of helping teach these vital digital literacies.
“What would you say to Education Administrators and practitioners who may be unmoved or reluctant to seriously consider Transmedia in the context of teaching and learning?”
I would want them to understand that “transmedia” isn’t some scary unatainable expensive movement that will redefine everything they do and take away control. Quite the opposite; transmedia to me is more about a frame of mind that lets you move effortlessly from one platform to the next, whatever works best for your storytelling (or educational) needs. It’s a wealth of possibility for the teacher.
That said, I don’t think some kind of mandatory adoption of “TRANSMEDIA METHODS” is the answer, because that does sound scary. We need to educate teachers as much as we need to educate students.
And that’s why Laura Fleming and Karen Wehner and I wanted to start to develop a blueprint for a transmedia classroom. We want to create a resource that lets teachers do what they need to do in their specific circumstances.
I think a lot of responses so far contemplate the possibilities (and challenges) of implementing transmedia in a classroom, particularly in a public school. I want to play devil’s advocate and look at the issue from a different perspective.
If I’m an individual or corporation looking to *profit* from the possibilities offered by transmedia education, what do I do? Create a summer camp offering challenge transmedia group experiences (like Rob outlined) to compete with interest-focused camps? Develop a technology platform that can be licensed to other companies? Produce an app? Key into possible governmental and grant funds from the US and abroad? Partner with a corporation to produce “branded education”? Can for-profit colleges leverage transmedia techniques and technologies?
I’m interested in hearing any suggestions.
Simon, I think the challenge lies in the notion that education is a discipline unto itself and a means to an end. We have created a process and measurement system that breaks down and compartmentalizes specific aspects of knowledge, the end product of which is “educated” adults. Why?
As infants we are “educated” by interaction and exploration of a multidimensional world. Language, motor skills, spatial relations — these are not taught as individual disciplines but are part of an overall experience. What do you call this process? I didn’t “educate” my infants, at least not discretely.
If I’m a corporation, I don’t have to think within the constraints of traditional education. Transmedia implementations create a level of engagement that drive participants to master skills and subject matter, not for the sake of passing a test, but for increasing the level of satisfaction in the experience.
So , as a corporation, if I could show parents that participation in a transmedia experience I created has a direct, positive impact on standardized test scores, that’s a major win. I can potentially disrupt the system from the outside.
Great thinking Alan – I’m in agreement that any significant change in the short term will likely stem from outside existing structures.
For an investor seeking to invest in companies with the potential for this kind of disruption, what would you say are the elements you’re looking for? Is it the typical tech model of making a series of diversified bets on smart talent, or is it possible to identify some kind of moat (patent or otherwise) even in a nascent “education tech” startup? Is a tech component even necessary, or are we going to see – as others have suggested – clever educators and storytellers create innovative and disruptive experiences through freely available tools?
My guess is an investor is more likely to look to play in an existing market then create a new one. The market for test prep is over $1Billion (as of 2010, the most recent number I could find) dominated by Princeton Review and Kaplan. That doesn’t take into account all the supplemental education programs like Sylvan Learning Center and Kumon, or even private tutoring. Our culture is so hung on getting good scores to get into the right schools. There’s an opportunity to apply transmedia in this market. If it works there, it’s only a matter of time before it finds its way into mainstream education.
Though technology is a component, it’s not about technology. The best films, video games, etc are not the ones with the best technology. Not to say you won’t need to create some new technology to implement a program like this. But I think most of the pieces are there. It’s more about clever educators and innovative storytellers, as you said.
Related to this discussion, I thought I would post one of the more interesting pieces I have read lately. Alan, I truly believe with the advent of the Common Core Standards here in the US, as well as with the power of social media, it is very possible to disrupt the system from the outside. http://influencealley.nationaljournal.com/2012/02/businesses-tackling-education.php
Inanimate Alice demonstrates this on a smaller scale. Teachers and learners are now curators of resources and can easily pick and choose which ones appeal to them and suit their needs.
My personal approach has been a four-pronged one.
- Reaching the policy-makers and decision-makers here in the US has been an important goal of mine…speaking to them about the power of transmedia practices and the vital role in can play in our education system.
- Speaking with existing corporations about how they can leverage their already existing assets using transmedia practices, therefore maximizing their value, their reach, and their lifecycle.
- Getting the attention of the creators and convincing them of the fairly untapped potential of transmedia properties within education.
- and finally, I am not one to wait around for all of this to happen, so working within our existing regime and structure and educating and empowering educators to create transmedia experiences on their own using those freely available tools you speak of, Simon- as well as existing curricular resources.
I love all of this.
Let’s say I’m a creative with an idea for an educational transmedia property that does all the things we’ve been talking about. Where do I go first to implement it?
Speaking from someone in the K12 arena, we do have a long way to go in terms of a digital implementation of the curriculum, if we expect these ideas to go beyond just pockets of innovation. Organized approaches to support educators in the field are going to be necessary. I do hold out hope that we will get to the point that the group describes, in terms of how we educate our children, as glimmers of them are apparent now.
Evidence of this is apparent today in the recent focus of developing PLCs, Professional Learning Communities. School district development of PLCs have become quite fashionable. Currently the creation of PLC has focused primarily on standards, National Core Standards, state standards, and breaking down those standards into essential skills. Ultimately with the focus of improving student learning and school assessments. I have my doubts about whether investing PLC efforts in this manner will actually return a value equal to the amount of effort. What I do recognize with PLCs, which I think is extremely valuable, is the increased collaboration between educators, and not just educators on the same campus. (Focusing on standards, establishing essential skills, is essentially the easy part, though there is still seems to be lots of time spent nailing down this initial step. What I feel is more worthy of the PLCs time is the effort put forth to design the instruction/curriculum that addresses the identified standards.) In a PLC, the rubber meets the road when you’re addressing student learning needs/deficiencies and you find yourself exhausting the ideas on differentiating that instruction to the child in a manner that they can comprehend. As educators we’ve been doing this for a long time, however, sometimes the differentiation of instruction means repeating the same instruction louder, or with additional practice problems. This is sometimes a result of unimaginative instructional design, and often a result of limited resources, among others. What makes it different now is the inclusion of the tools that lend themselves to the practice of teaching concepts and designs in a manner that was previously not possible, such as with transmedia storytelling. For teachers to be able to differentiate instruction for students in this manner they are going to need the support of many people, including the folks in their PLCs, the community, and those like yourselves in this discussion.
Another cloaked example of the ideas described in this conversation come in the form of the current discussions related to online learning, blending learning, etc. in K12. These conversations about online learning, if they are focused more on the construction of curriculum, differentiating the instruction, and not just automating the traditional classroom instruction, are to a point, essentially describing transmedia storytelling. I feel we will be much better off when we drop the nomenclature online learning, or blended learning, and that those practices are just a normal practice of differentiating instruction to students. The use of transmedia storytelling and other technology enabled designs become additional sources to foster learning in children.
We are at the very early evolution stage of what education will become, but I see promising signs that we will get to a better place, eventually. I’m hopeful.
Thanks for the conversation!
Not so long ago “digital literacy” was a term hijacked by the
technology folks to describe an understanding of how your computer
works….or rather what you have to do to get it to work for you.
As Jeff points out we have arrived at the signal moment where “there
is nothing to learn.” The hiatus, where the world took a
generation-long deep breath to figure out what computers are all about, is over.
With digital literacy now back in the hands of writers and
educationalists it is timely to be adding another “C” to the list,
that of Creativity. In producing Inanimate Alice, the lack of an
episode 5 on our part has inspired teachers and students around the
world to develop their own next episodes. Many such efforts can be
found in a search of the net. They demonstrate considerable original
thought and an eagerness to collaborate. “Alice in Afghanistan” is
profound and moving.
These responses to the story have molded our thinking how to address
educational objectives with Creativity surely playing a big part in
what happens next.
Great response, Ian. I think that this is a marvelous addition to Mary Anne’s initial questions about what can be applied from commercial franchises. We’ve watched fans organize to creatively “fill in the gaps” around famous properties like Harry Potter and Dr. Who (it’s arguably been going on for 40 years in the latter example), so it’s exciting to know that students will do the same for an original IP – especially one that is education-centric. You and the rest of the Inanimate Alice team deserve enormous credit for leading in this area, and I’m sure you’ll be passing on what you’ve learned for some time to come.
Well received Simon. Thanks a lot.
We’re bent on building the storyline and educational outreach in tandem, so expect to come across new aspects on Alice soon. Hopefully, it will become delightfully complicated and all the more intriguing for inquisitive minds of whatever age.
Oooh, I love a virtual roundtable!
My thoughts on this are fairly simple and take a step back from the focus on transmedia and more to how children are bombarded with information overload (and with it a host of distractions)! I researched and wrote a short article for Times Educational Supplement 5 years ago in 2007 that highlighted how a few select schools were looking to digital platforms to engage, empower and bring students together to work collaboratively (whilst also in specific, independent roles).
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2366537
On rereading this there are two quotes that stand out as relevant today as they were then, prior to such commercial awareness of transmedia. These are,
“It’s good for kids learning about writing for an audience, and not just one teacher,” says Miles Berry, a member of the British Computer Society’s E-learning working party. “The sense of peer review is important – what you write or add doesn’t count unless it’s accepted by peers.”
Miles is headteacher at Alton Convent Preparatory School, Alton, Hampshire, and his Year 6 class has used wikis to create a school magazine online.
“When my pupils realised that the others could change what they had written, they were initially terrified, but soon they learned to trust their peers not to damage their work. The sense of communal responsibility over the shared artefact was an important social transformation,” he adds.
I have two teenage sons who would prefer to engage with their learning through their devices but so far traditional teaching methods leads them back to books and Google. Both Robert Pratten’s case study (that he walked me through in detail earlier this week and is fabulous) and Inanimate Alice are still very much leading the way, but we need more…. Perhaps without the focus on transmedia, which might frighten off educators, instead the focus being on accessible, personalised, immediate, cross-device learning that is storycentric and engages kids in ways that they are already accustomed to.
This IS the way forward!
Alison.
@storycentral
Thanks Alison! So glad that you’re participating – for those reading, Alison is a leading pioneer and creative force in this space and the driving momentum behind the Storyworld conference (which I believe is in LA this year).
I’m the writer behind ‘Inanimate Alice’ and various other transmedia projects. For me the key to encouraging engagement with kids of any age is this: good stories. Stories that they want to read, stories that they want to engage with. If your project has a story that kids like, then half your work is done already, both inside and outside the classroom. I’m not trying to minimize the complexities of transmedia and education here – any emerging field will have problems finding ways to engage educators. But it is clear that any education programme that hopes to engage kids with reading and writing will do so best with materials that enable kids to read and write their own stories in response to whatever it is they are reading/viewing in the classroom. For me this is one of the great potentials of transmedia – the way that it can encourage mash-up, remix, and remediation from the outset.
Hooray for good stories! Nearly hooray for mashup and remix but we’re venturing into the minefields of intellectual property here. Angela Colvert’s work with Krindlekrax was really inspiring http://bit.ly/HhHEzk.
One of my big concerns as a teacher of creative media is finding good, freely available software that’s easy to use for young learners and a source of short manageable projects which will enable teachers to put their toes in the waters. http://bit.ly/f7A3ls
Any news/recommendations on either of these fronts?
glad you asked that….we hope to help solve some of that someday soon. As Ian stated, due to the lack of an
episode 5 for Inanimate Alice, this has inspired teachers and students around the
world to develop their own next episodes and right now this is mainly done through PowerPoint. Although the episodes are fantastic, PP is cumbersome and we hope to simplify this process for them in the future while not stifling their creativity.
This is a great discussion. Simon, Jeff, Rob and Ian have all made valid points, one of which is that this “transmedia” thing is nearly ubiquitous in the world children and young adults live in today. In education, however, transmedia, multimedia literacy, or whatever you want to call it, has to be guided to learning outcomes. One of the fantastic aspects of Inanimate Alice project is the effort that Lacetti, Laura Fleming and others have done to guide the fantastically compelling “digi-novel” to learning outcomes; it’s not just a story or game but a launch pad for extended classroom learning at many grade levels. Unfortunately, there has been a dearth of real research to measure the impact of multimedia literacy compared with “traditional” approaches. I would agree with a commentator that it’s “almost a given” and Laura mentions in her post the expected outcomes on achievement that could be expected. Well constructed “serious games” geared to learning outcomes, with built in Artificial Intelligence and auto-assessment will have serious impact on education in the near future. There certainly has been research in how these transmedia experiences affect student achievement, but more needs to be done. It is of course expensive to, for example, pilot 10 schools with ipads and 10 schools without, develop a new curriculum for the ipad schools, and track these learners over 6-12 years, or longer, to measure the difference in testing, college admittance, or other definable measures of achievement. But knowing what really works is essential. Maybe it’s just having a great teacher, and it doesn’t matter whether you do everything on pencil and paper or on digital platforms! Fundamentally, if we approach transmedia in education projects with a goal of, as Alan appropriately posts “to prepare our children to thrive as adults” the outcomes will be sound, but it’s not enough to just create transmedia per se. It’s not about what will sell or what will entertain our kids, but what will help them to learn, be creative and analytical, and flourish.
I’ll also point participants towards Quest To Learn, a school that seems to be trying to do everything we’ve been talking about, teaching kids through gaming. http://q2l.org/ How do we copy this model in a way that is accessible to more people?
The quality and variety of insight here thus far has been excellent – thanks to everyone who has contributed. As we head into the final two days of the roundtable, I’d like to encourage those who have yet to comment to add their thoughts. I’m sure GETIdeas would love as many different perspectives and opinions as possible, and this is such a nascent and fast-moving area that there really are no bad answers here. You never know how you might end up sparking an entirely new avenue of discussion.
Simon
This is a fascinating discussion, especially if you like me have three kids growing up as digital natives; it’s a brave new world, meshing and clashing with an old, gritty world. Both beautiful and horrible in their own ways, and worlds that need serious navigational skills to get through (mostly) unharmed. We have to give our kids these skills and any tools they need, or they will find their own, which not always need to be the best ones (or even good ones).
Coming from Finland I’m from a country that does well in PISA tests year after year. It’s also the country which was the first to state that Internet access is a human right. There are more mobile subscriptions than inhabitants in Finland, etc and so on.
Still, the educational system has been fairly resistant to change. The 7-year old me could sit down next to my son in his class and not feel especially out of place. The 7-year old me could even probably impress my son with his Star Wars knowledge
. Yes, we have classes that operate solely on computers. Yes, we have initiatives where YouTube is used as source material for the pupils to put together presentations on different issues. But true transmedia learning is still lagging behind.
For Finland and the success of the educational system here I think one absolute key has been the independence of schools and teachers. There is a curriculum on state level, but how this is implemented is very much up to schools and even individual teachers. I believe this is how transmediated learning should come about as well, not through heavily steered all-embracing projects, but by giving teachers tools and skills to put their own creativity to use.
Thanks for the great conversation and the many helpful and interesting links above!
i just thought i would mention two things to be considered in this conversation:
- something i love specifically about Inanimate Alice is its global appeal. Alice has readers in 100 countries and this is due in part to the universal storyline, the fact that it is available in 5 languages, and it meets learning objectives in all schools. universal appeal and applicability are two things to consider when developing transmedia properties.
-also, i think we have to remember the importance of school libraries in all of this. libraries these days lend themselves to being experiential, participatory, while having the resources, facilities, and flexibility to implement and infuse transmedia learning.
I agree, Simon, that the biggest opportunity I think is in encouraging individual teachers to do cool things — especially because initiatives like these are unlikely to be adopted across the board and by every teacher (when many teachers themselves are severely lacking in digital skills). The trick then is to provide the resources and understanding and best practices necessary for teachers to pursue their own iterations and ideas.
Here’s my final question for the week. It goes out to Kate, Ian, and Laura predominately, but I’d love thoughts from other creatives as well: if you were given significant resources (let’s say, for illustration’s sake, $10 million) to bring Inanimate Alice to the next level with your next project, what would you do? Feel free to answer with as much, or little, specificity as you feel capable of, and comfortable with.
Simon
Many thanks for the prompter Simon,
The short answer to this is we have well developed plans for the rest of the series in addition to building out the education and
entertainment outreach elements. ‘Inanimate Alice’ emerges from a
movie screenplay I wrote where Alice is in her mid-twenties and
working for the world’s top game developer. Brad and Alice are
preparing to launch a new game module at the Tokyo Games Show and a crisis is upon them.
‘Inanimate Alice’ was conceived as the backstory to that movie. Over 10 episodes, each one more interactive and complex than the one preceding it, we will see Alice develop into the character animator and game designer she is destined to become. In all the series will comprise 3.5 hours of increasingly immersive interactive experience.
In the later episodes the story becomes ever more game-like such that episodes appear as vignettes of the game that is at the core of the movie.
Beyond the 10 episodes we have developed plans for a series of
interstitial or in-between the episodes stories. There is a
substantial time gap between episode 1 where Alice is 8 and episode 2 where she is 10. ‘Season 1: Alice in Australia’ fills in this gap with entirely new and unsuspected adventures. This is a season of 12 x 5 minute short stories where Alice is living with her parents down under. We meet her at home in Melbourne, travelling around the country and the region. Commissioned by Education Services Australia, the Government Ministers Company, this set of stories is produced on a supersimple authoring tool with the kids being encouraging to remix the assets and introduce their own. The first story will appear in
April 2012. We envisage 5 seasons in all delivering 5 hours of mashable content ideal for educational development.
Concurrently, we will be launching a magazine based on the series on Everloop, the social site for under 13′s. After years of producing materials for educators this is the first kids-facing promotion.
These are our first forays in what should turn into a considerable outreach program.
That’s the short answer. For the longer version, you’ll have to bring along your check-book!
TRANSMEDIA ON A BUDGET:
INTERTEXTUALITY & CROSS-MEDIA NARRATIVES IN THE CLASSROOM
What a thrilling forum this has been, and I’m so proud of everyone who has contributed such brilliant thoughts. I want to take a slightly different tack based on some of the suggestions here that there are teachers out there who are determined to convey transmedia literacy to their students, but who are faced with no formal programs and extremely limited budgets. As a writing teacher in mid-1980s New York City public schools, and as an occasional teacher to this day, I’ve faced these very issues. Here are a few chewing gum and Kleenex solutions:
I. Cross-platform story worlds. The goal here is to get students to think about how different media evoke different emotions and responses from audience members, even if similar content is being conveyed. Students are asked to think about their favorite story world, whether that is Harry Potter, Twilight, Lemony Snicket, High School Musical, etc. They are also asked to think about how they feel when watching television with family in their living room, viewing something alone on their laptops in their bedroom, enjoying a movie in the dark of a movie theater, or even how differently they feel between reading an old fashioned book versus text on their digital tablet.
The assignment then is to choose a story world and make two different types of comparison. The first is to describe both the differences and similarities in the way that the story is told on at least three of these media platforms. What unique story elements can be conveyed in a novel that can’t in a theatrical feature? (Interior monologue, memories, richness of backstory, etc.) What is lost when you watch a theatrical film on an iPhone? Is anything gained? Does an accumulation of viewings and readings of the story world on multiple platforms increase the student’s understanding of the characters, themes and narrative? Or does this repeated exposure simply provide a comfortable, familiar environment in which to hang for a while?
The second type of comparison is designed to get the student to think about his or her emotional response to the story, again comparing and contrasting similar stories on different media platforms. How do novels touch us in ways that no other medium can? What feelings are being evoked when we manipulate characters and achieve incredible feats of strength and skill in the midst of a video game? How do the changes made to the story between each medium affect you as a reader/viewer? (The ending of the final Harry Potter film, for example, was altered from the book to make it more visually spectacular. How did this affect you? Did you resent the changes, or appreciate them?) Are all of these changes necessary, or should the filmmakers and game designers stay absolutely true to the original text?
For students who have a knowledge or facility with video manipulation, what role do YouTube mash-ups and other reinterpretations of the story play for the student as a form of creative expression? What about for the student’s audience?
II. Transmedia story worlds. To take this all one step further, there are a subgroup of story worlds that manifest themselves with different narratives on different media platforms. The classic example of this is Star Wars, where there are six feature films, two animated TV series that take place between the second and third features, various video games, novels and comic books fill in blank spots across the franchise’s chronology, etc. We can also observe that studios like Lionsgate are emphasizing different aspects of story worlds like The Hunger Games with online and social media content. They do this to familiarize potential audiences with the property, and get them excited to see the film and delve more deeply into the mythology of the narrative.
So again, the student is asked to think about how their favorite transmedia story worlds manifest themselves on different media platforms, and how successful each aspect of the story is conveyed given the strengths and weaknesses of the platform.
The five Battlestar Galactica webisodes that followed the character of Gaeta on a solo adventure, for example, gives us remarkable new information about that character, and deepened our insight into the themes of the whole television series. (For example: Could our preconceived notions about what is right and wrong about the Cylons be entirely false…?) What makes us want to move from one platform to the next in order to take in more of the story? How are we rewarded as fans for doing this extra work?
Finally, as we become more deeply involved with a transmedia story world, how do we define our relationship with the storyteller(s)? Do we think about this person (Joss Whedon, George Lucas, Suzanne Collins), or do we just care about the characters and situations? Do we have a mediated way of telling one another how we feel about the story? Is there a sense that the storyteller is somehow listening to us? Do we feel we have some kind of impact (however small) on how the story is told, or how it turns out? (It can be said that George Lucas diminished the role of Jar Jar Binks after much fan criticism of the character, but increased the role of Boba Fett after fans declared him super cool.)
Getting young people to understand the similarities and distinctions between various traditional and digital media platforms is a vital first step toward considering how best to use them for academic and creative self-expression. Getting them to understand how to design and orchestrate narrative elegantly across an array of audience touch points is to grant them incredible new powers in a rapidly changing age.
Jeff Gomez
CEO
Starlight Runner Entertainment
@jeff_gomez
Jeff, most of what you talk about here applies to getting students to understand the elements of storytelling in the traditional sense of entertainment. What about science? Math? Geography?
My tween daughter came home from school yesterday complaining “why do they just stuff us like turkeys with facts???!?” There is a tendency for educators to push curriculum without context. And context is the “glue” that allows the students to retain knowledge, rather than just facts. Context is narrative, isn’t it?
How do you see the “basic subject” educators using transmedia techniques?
Alan Berkson
Intelligist Group
@berkson0
Leading on from Jeff’s post here, and Simon’s kind offer of $10m above, I’ll make a brief observation. In discussions about transmedia in general, and transmedia in education, there always seem to me a stark divide between the huge franchises, like Star Wars, and small scrappy under-financed projects, like my own. As a writer, it’s an interesting conundrum to me that transmedia has zero foothold in the world of traditional publishing – an industry that is in the grip of rapid and complete transformation in terms of workflow and content delivery, though the content itself has, so far, remained pretty much the same, i.e. books or their electronic equivalent. This is part of the reason why it’s very difficult for writer-led transmedia projects to find business models or finance. I have no idea if this will change or if it will be the case that only the massive film or games studio-backed projects will make it through this phase.
Kate, Last year at O’Reilly Tools of Change conference Jeff “challenged” the traditional publishing industry. An excerpt:
“Publishers need to be worried about what happens when all the wood is gone,” Gomez joked, “they need to make sure their storylines are spread out across a variety of platforms, devices, and screens.”
He emphasized that “books get respect; they’re the crazy grandpa that Hollywood executives keep in the basement. Hollywood was born out of books.”
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/conferences/article/46181-tools-of-change-2011-technology-and-the-future-of-storytelling.html
What about 39 Clues or the upcoming Infinity Ring? Publishing is *starting* to get there, slowly — but I agree that writer-led transmedia projects are hard. I’m in the exact same boat, and became an entrepreneur by necessity.
This has been a superb conversation so far, with contributions from people who are so obviously passionate about transmedia, about education and about what learning should be like now and in the future. As someone who came somewhat late to the concept of transmedia (compared to most of those writing here) I want to offer some thoughts from the perspective of an educator who has believed for 30 years and more in the power of technology to enhance learning and to make education relevant to students.
In particular, I want to try to articulate something about the context in which transmedia learning can be conceptualized and developed – I do not believe, for instance, that transmedia is just another tool, to be deployed within the current frames of reference of the formal institutions of education, from school to university. It can certainly be used in that way, and effectively, but I also feel that transmedia is, in itself, a component of major changes that are taking place in education today and is better seen as itself an agent of transformation in learning.
For what it’s worth, I believe that learners today –those in the generation currently wending its way through school, college and university – are quite possibly less shackled by conventional wisdom than just about any generation in history. They are less willing to accept that the way things have been are the way that things should continue to be. It is an attitude that, consciously or unconsciously, is being brought into the relationship between teacher and learner, and it is changing that relationship profoundly, especially for those learners beyond the youngest years. There is a growing realization by learners, for instance, that while they should feel able to continue to depend on the subject matter expertise of their teachers, they are no longer dependent on those teachers for access to information (nor indeed are they dependent solely on the teacher for access to the subject matter expertise itself).
When that generational attitude is combined with the profound cultural and technological shift taking place as we move from the print-based culture, which has lasted half a millennium, to the increasingly digital culture of today, we find ourselves in a time and place where the very frames of reference that we have deployed in education for decades, if not centuries, are no longer able to sustain formal education as it currently stands in most parts of the world.
The underlying context in which education takes place, the very ground upon which the formal institutions of learning stand, is shifting, and shifting fast. We now have, I believe, the ingredients for a major transformation in our understanding of what education is, how it happens, what its purpose is and how it should (or even can) be managed. Education is moving inexorably to the network, to the extent that the network, I feel, will eventually displace the formal institutions of education as the predominant locus within which learning takes place This doesn’t mean that those institutions will disappear any time soon, of course – but what it does mean is that any institution, from the smallest primary school to the grandest of ancient universities, that does not recognize the shifts taking place and therefore does not change to accommodate, will wither and die.
Bring transmedia together with a transformative, learner-focused pedagogy – one that shifts control of learning firmly from the teacher to the learner – and we begin to see possibilities for truly open-ended learning opportunities. The concept of the Transmedia LearningWorld, mentioned above by Laura, is one that should never come to the learner as a fully-realised landscape or property – rather it should be designed to be incomplete, non-coercive to the greatest degree possible, with as many entry-points as possible, and that exists across a range of media, both in the virtual and physical spheres (it is all just one sphere anyway, ultimately), abundantly rich in pathways and possibilities, and a world that, although ultimately bounded in some way, offers learners scope and material and resources (including other learners and teachers) to permit them to engage in deep and meaningful learning across the whole landscape of human knowledge.
If this can be achieved, even in a small way, within the formal educational settings, then that is fine. But in the longer term, I believe that transmedia will really come to the fore in what is unthinkingly called ‘informal learning’ at the present time. What some still insist on calling informal learning, one day will become the dominant mode of learning (it may well be already), and largely that will occur outside the formal institutions. Where it does continue to happen within the formal institutions they will at least no longer have control over the nature and scope and curriculum of such learning. The learner will be in control.
Transmedia in learning? Bring it on, I say.
I love this, and I think you make a good point about teachers no longer be the focus point of subject expertise. Instead, teachers become guides through education, the ones that help shape and direct the learning of the student, showing them best practices for learning rather than the knowledge itself, no?
Lucas, that’s a blog in 2 sentences. Excellent.
Late to this conversation (and I also must admit that I’ve only had time to scan most of the wonderful responses here), but I want to approach this question from a slightly different angle. Rather than address the _why we should go transmedia_ part of the question, I’m just as much concerned with the pragmatics of _how_ we can get there given existing infrastructures, which as Lucas notes will inevitably change but are, right now, fairly rigid (at least in the US). While we’ve yet to see how the Ready to Learn grants will impact, say, Sesame Street, and to what degree these implementations will fall on either side of Jeff’s continuum of storyworld definition, I’m wondering what a practical, feasible use of transmedia might look like in a ‘standard’ classroom (a loaded term, I know) and, moreover, what projects we can use to promote transmedia learning with administrators, educators, boards, etc. who just don’t ‘get’ it? Jeff lists several examples of such a canon (a term I use loosely here), and they all work for one reason and one reason only: they are repeatable experiences, bound to a large degree of permanence. We can, for example, examine Star Wars from the standpoint of its characters, locations, objects, and mysticism but we can do so because the films, games, novels, graphic novels and websites all still exist, even if it might take a little searching to find that first edition of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. In other words, we have a common ‘text’ we can ‘read’ from, even if our experiences of the universe are as varied as the platforms that connect it.
But what about the more unruly transmedia projects, those that resist or at least suffer from a lack of repeatability? I’m talking here, obviously, about ARGs and the like, where a one-off performance is privileged over long-term stability, but I’m also talking about the lack of upkeep that plagues the more interactive aspects of transmedia expression over time, those that allow the audience/students to engage more directly with the fiction: expired domain names, bunk email addresses, missing web videos, phone numbers that no longer work. On the one hand, these are often the most digital of sites in a transmedia project and, as such, they are bound to the ephemeralities of digital practices (if not hardware) and are therefore most vulnerable to disappearance. On the other hand, though, such disconnections can short-circuit even the most analog of sites. One particularly egregious example of this short-circuiting can be seen in J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman’s Personal Effects: Dark Art, a project that is centered by a print book bound with tangible artifacts that, nonetheless, are sometimes intricately linked to the same type of digital sites I listed above. The value of a project like PE:DA for me is that, pedagogically, it’s incredibly nuanced with respect to the way that it helps its audience to begin to make cross-sited connections, moving from platform to platform in a manner that becomes increasingly organic as its narrative progresses. As such, I often found myself recommending the book to English instructors as a pedagogical point-of-entry to the form. ‘Found myself’ recommending in the past tense, because I can no longer do so: most, if not all, of the digital sites used in PE:DA are no longer functioning, with fictional content replaced instead by ’404 Domain Not Found’ errors or, worse, a Go Daddy ad that beckons us to buy the address for ourselves. While this is partially alleviated by the Wayback Machine, such a dynamic only takes the audience so far. To repeat a key point: this book is broken not because the binding has come loose or the publisher chose an acid-laden paper that dissolves over time, but because the digital sites it networks meaning through are no longer around. This doesn’t mean that some other project won’t come along that does what PE:DA did and does it better. But we’re not only losing an important aspect of the history of transmedia development, but also an important model for insight into transmedia design as a learning tool. While I understand that not all projects are designed for permanence (and indeed, this gives a lot of transmedia expression its power), experientiality isn’t necessarily bound to transience, and it can’t be if we want to incorporate it into education as a whole.
I recognize that I’m clinging here to what might seem like a small subset of transmedia practices, those leaning much more towards ARG frameworks than something like Star Wars. But as transmedia becomes even more prevalent, the line between its genres will inevitably blur, and distinctions like this will become scalar, not binary. This matters not simply because we can learn from PE:DA as a finished product (consider, as a side note, how much immersive digital learning has taken from the history of video gaming), but perhaps more importantly because the reality of its current state, as well as those projects like it, privileges a lack of repeatability, even if as Hutchins himself notes, it’s lamentable and often out of the primary creator’s hands (I understand the economic motivations behind this, too, but that’s not my concern here).
I’ve spent probably too much space already here prefacing what in reality is really a simple question/proposition: how do we balance transmedia educational integration, esp. that which is more experiential, with a need for modularity and replayability? I don’t mean ‘replayable’ even in the context of ARGs (although I feel strongly that there is much we could learn from them if we had more than just message boards and forum posts to go by and instead, NDAs and such notwithstanding, had access to design docs, producer bibles, etc.), but in the context of ‘born educational’ content that can be used from classroom-to-classroom, and then modified by individual instructors given the needs of their students and curriculum coverage. This, to me, is by FAR the greatest challenge that we face on the CONTENT side of transmedia learning. Many, like Lucas and Laura and Jeff, have already begun to address what a transmedia classroom might look like, feel like, sound like, but what does a transmedia ‘textbook’ (an outdated term, to be sure) look like, feel like, sound like, and how can we design it so that we’re not forced to duplicate the enormous amount of work put into its creation each time? Even as grant-funded work in transmedia learning is increasingly becoming the norm, is it feasible to expect the form to grow if the outcome of every one year grant is a two week experiential transmedia learning project with a one-off performance that can’t be duplicated (for many reasons, the least of which is student-to-student spoiling of content)? To put this differently, how can we accommodate both modularity and individualization in educational transmedia design?
This, to me, is one of the most difficult and exciting questions on the ‘how’ side of this coin, one that, I feel, will dictate the direction that transmedia takes in the coming years. We all know how much work it takes to plan, produce and launch a transmedia project and, for the most part, this is a model that simply won’t fly in education. Implicit in such a claim is the notion that we can use prior transmedia productions (as Jeff notes) as a means to teach media and structural literacies about the form. But if the best-practice productions, the pedagogical points-of-entry I mentioned earlier, are no longer around, and if this lack of repeatability becomes an inherent part of some aspects of experiential design, then we have already limited the possibilities of transmedia integrations in education. It’s one thing to design a classroom around the way that students learn; it’s another to tailor content towards these literacies from the outset.
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Marc Ruppel
marcruppel.net
@marcruppel
Thought I’d respond to the issues Marc raises and touch gently on Simon’s question about business models.
Our Conducttr platform creates repeatable ARG-type experiences. We ran the Florida ARG twice before running live with students – once for the education team and once for the charity’s patrons that funded the project. On the two occasions we play-tested the experience we compressed time from three weeks to three days – another demonstration of the power of Conducttr to not only replay but alter time
Conducttr is sold as a managed service for a license fee dependent on various factors but in the case of education, based on the number of students. We get an ongoing licence fee every time the project is re-run. Hence its in our interest to make sure everything stays available
But let me say something about the content issue. While Conducttr publishes and interacts with the students, we’re actually facilitating the creation of a storyworld in which the students role-play. Hence the teaching still takes place in the classroom and is still guided by teachers and by peers. Our approach to transmedia education is not to automate the learning experience so that the kids are programmed – it’s to create a rich, interactive world that stimulates questions and debate – to create a learning environment.
Creating these repeatable experiences and persistent storyworlds is key to our commercial offering to brands, publishers, movie studios etc. because we believe that formally product-based businesses are or will move to service-based businesses where consumers (and students) are engaged on an ongoing basis.
Please note that my company is not a content business, it’s a technology business. It just so happens that we form good business partnerships because we can lend our expertise in audience engagement to content partners to help them make a smooth transition to this new world of transmedia storytelling-based opportunities.
As Simon notes there are many training opportunities and simulation opportunities but we’re not about to take a basic computer-based training exercises and just scatter it across many platforms. What Conducttr allows is a fundamental reboot of the approach to education to that it’s not just a tick-box, multi-choice experience.
Robert Pratten
@robpratten
Thanks for the reply, Rob. Conductrr certainly has the potential to reinvent the way we think about transmedia production. It goes a LONG way towards tackling the issue of sustainability and repeatability. Extremely encouraging.
I’ll add a couple of things:
The distinction between student-created ‘learning environments’ and student-centered learning might be miniscule, but it plays a big role in defining how we approach transmedia education. Teachers, for instance, act much more as facilitators and guides in transmedia learning environments than they do in a traditional top-down manner. It’s their job to help their students navigate the multiple points-of-entry to a given subject, and I see this as much more of a Montessori-type of model. Here, students might also be encouraged (as Rob noted) to create these same learning environments. This is where the power of counterfactual thinking comes into play, as it allows them to fictionally inhabit a factually-based world (this is also, not so incidentally, the kind of thinking that drove our design of The Arcane Gallery of Gadgetry, http://www.arcanegalleryofgadgetry.org; Kari Kraus at UMd, @karikraus, is also doing wonderful work in counterfactual thought and education).
Of course, allowing students to work in this capacity– as transmedia creators in their own right–isn’t the same as having them engage with content structured to promote transmedia engagement from the outset, to ‘role-play’, as Rob puts it, in a structured and maintained learning environment with directed content and goals. My question was how we might begin thinking about building this content in a manner that is extensible, that allows for input from teachers depending on their needs. While I could see something like Conductrr functioning in creating and, just as importantly, maintaining a transmedia program, it’s the ability to customize experiences for our students that will ultimately matter. And as an (important) aside, based on my experiences with transmedia learning, it’s the schools who are _least_ able to afford licensing, etc. that are most likely to be open to transmedia experimentation. How do we promote integration on this level that is financially feasible ?
I guess what I’m getting at is that platforms like Conductrr are truly valuable when the students and teachers have a sense of what it is they are developing and, subsequently, when the teachers facilitate learning by guiding students through these experiences. Students, as we’ve all noted, are already advanced in this capacity and their expectations of transmedia meaning. Teachers? Not so much (although, as also noted at different points here, that will change as newer generations come into the profession). So if we want to students and teachers to work in transmedia as a creative excercise, Conductrr (and the like) is invaluable. But how do we get the teachers to understand the demands and delicacies of transmedia development? Or, at least, how do we get them to understand transmedia to the point where they can contribute something meaningful and individualized to the framework of an est. project? And, again, how do we teach teachers about transmedia when so many touchstone projects are no longer around?
So who is going to create this content? Is it always going to be externally-driven? I don’t expect, for instance, that each History teacher writes her own textbook. Bottom line: we need to empower teachers to begin to think like transmedia producers, at least on _some_ level, so that they can improvise within whatever frameworks they find themselves in.
From what I understand of it (and correct me if I’m wrong), this is what Inanimate Alice or Lucas Johnson and Karen Wehner’s The Time Tribe are trying to do, although how the specifics work is most likely going to remain a secret until launch. But let’s pretend there’s no such thing as Inanimate Alice or any similar projects: would it be possible to get educators to begin lesson planning through related methods? In other words, using Rob’s important distinction, how do we begin to treat educational content as a service-based enterprise rather than a product-based outcome? This is systemic problem, to be sure, but also one with a solution in how we approach transmedia.
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Marc Ruppel
marcruppel.net
@marcruppel
Great to hear from you, Marc, and glad you joined the discussion. I absolutely agree with your earlier point about ARGs and the like disappearing from the record once they’ve run their original course, and I think that problem is something that a lot of the transmedia community is looking to solve — look at, for instance, Jan Libby’s Snow Town “i-fi app”.
You also make a great point about the fact that it’s those long-lasting, persistent properties that we can examine and re-examine and explore meaning and theme and character… it’s like any school English class reading the Great Gatsby or Hamlet. I think we need to find the equivalent in transmedia, something big enough and persistent enough and RICH enough to capture the imaginations and brains of students for years to come. Maybe Inanimate Alice is on its way to becoming that; maybe it will be something else entirely.
As for recreating the “text-book” I again agree, and that’s what I think a “LearningWorld” as described by Laura could be, and that’s what I hope to help accomplish with some kind of “transmedia classroom” blueprint — all of the base material necessary for an educator to create the content they need for their students.
What needs to be in such a document? What EXACTLY will such a service provide? What do teachers need?
May I apologise in advance for appearing to pour a bucket of cold water on this debate. Some years ago I worked as an IT trainer in primary school across the East Anglian region of the UK (for UK readers it was the NOF training programme) It was an eye-opener: I was amazed at what teachers didn’t know and I didn’t consider myself to be especially tecchy then – or now. The “curriculum” we were required to teach from our handbook was way ahead of the needs of most of the teachers with whom I was working.
In my current post I’m seen as distinctly eccentric by most of the staff (maybe I am a little:-) many of our teachers still wear their technological ignorance as a badge of pride – one young-ish teacher (clutching his iPad as a kind of techno-sucking blanket) proclaimed last week to generally amused approval that he had no idea what a blog was (I merely smiled thinly).
Yet I know no teachers who do not wish to provide the best possible education for their students.
Let me make this clear: I am not counselling despair but unless this paradox is fully appreciated the developments in the delightful learning experiences we would all expound will fall on mostly stony ground within our education establishment. We are all a long way ahead of the thinking about technologically-aided learning of very many teachers and politicians. I’m inclined to agree with John that formal education establishments failing to recognise the current shifts will wither and die, though I’d much rather they evolved and grew. It will be long campaign: we should know our enemy and keep our powder dry.
Inanimate Alice exists in the gap between print literature and the kind of experience Conducttr offers. It is manageable and comprehensible by most teachers. It works on reasonably old equipment. It does not create difficulties with intellectual property or filters. It is, as Kate herself advocates, a good story. Like Alice, the blueprint needs to be a transmedia experience in itself that can be used with pleasure by teachers for the kind of self-directed learning transmedia allows. It should be lightly written, with a wit that removes the friction of learning by avoiding worthiness. It should be accessible at a simple level, yet layered so that teachers who wish to go further can drill down into it. It needs to make accessible: key concepts, tools, examples, tutorials, resources and participatory support. The medium should be the message.
PS It should digital glue and digital lubricant…
Guys, we’re hitting the weekend so I would just like to offer a personal thanks to all participants for making this such a lively and thoughtful debate – and, of course, to GETIdeas for hosting. My hope is that the above will be synthesized and recorded somehow to use as the basis for further discussion. Have a great weekend everybody.
Simon
As someone who has recently been dabbling in transmedia and ARG and experimenting with how I can use it in the classroom to engage students (I am a language teacher), this has been a most fascinating discussion. In terms of what teachers need, I think teachers and all people need to first think not about what particular websites do but think about how they can be used to help you (in this case help you tell a story). For educators the most important message I see that keeps reappearing is the importance of the narrative – a good story with interesting characters that the students can relate to is paramount in keeping participants engaged. Working on a low budget we can use a variety of sites to help tell our story; however, as has been pointed out, there is the problem of sites (particularly free ones) of changing their terms, being taken down or taken over and so on. This means the work you put into something one year may not work the next year. This is something I’m trying to work through this year, having created an “ARG” type activity for languages last year that I want to use again. One thing I see as potentially useful is using things like a Google profile (complete with google+,, a calendar, etc) and twitter to help with the creation of characters that are ongoing from year to year. Last year I experimented with using different websites and characters to develop a story students needed to navigate their way through. Whilst I’m not sure if it is strictly transmedia or ARG or something else, it certainly engaged many of the students and got them thinking not only about the language they needed to use to navigate through things but also how to navigate through the Internet. This year I am looking at how I can reinvent the story without recreating everything and am doing this by using the same characters, who still have their profiles out there. In a nutshell I think that if we create characters who can be reinvented in new chapters / stories (kind of like Alice or an online Indiana Jones) it may help alleviate some of the problems of permanency.
Showing teachers, especially those like Tim mentioned, that they don’t need to be that technologically advanced to engage students with transmedia stories is a big step. Teachers love telling stories, we need to spread the message that students will one day prefer their stories to be acted out across more than just the pages of a book and that with our collective imaginations teachers can create stories together that can be played out across streets or across the world. The more educators become aware of transmedia opportunities the better. Thank you for the opportunity to join this discussion.
Since its inception more than 40 years ago, public media has worked with visionaries like Jim Henson, Joan Ganz Cooney, and Fred Rogers to use the power of television to help America’s children learn, especially children living in poverty. Over the last twenty years, we have demonstrated that if you apply the same principles to the design and production of content online, on mobile, at home and in the classroom, you can use these technologies to engage and accelerate learning.
Research shows that PBS KIDS educational programming across media platforms is highly trusted by parents, extremely appealing to children, and can have real impact in narrowing the achievement gap. We are constantly examining how new technologies effect children, exploring new ways to leverage PBS KIDS characters as educational magnets, and how to co-opt and deploy new technologies for anywhere, anytime learning in underserved communities.
The recent success of PBS KIDS’ cross-platform content in advancing children’s literacy learning (http://www.pbs.org/about/media/about/cms_page_media/146/raising_readers_a_story_of_success_1.pdf) has led us to posit that kids who interact with our math content across multiple platforms will learn more than those who just interact with our math content on one platform. Through a forward-looking grant from the U.S. Department of Education called Ready To Learn (RTL), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and PBS are pioneering and testing this transmedia approach to learning. We are working with top producers of every kind of kids media along with technology experts, educators and researchers to produce transmedia suites – collections of video clips, online games, mobile apps and interactive whiteboard games that feature the same characters and all tie to the same curriculum framework – to help build early math skills of children ages 2-8, particularly from low-income communities. Public television stations and their partners are delivering this content on-air, on-line, and on-the ground to children throughout the nation.
Public media’s transmedia approach to learning looks at different inputs for kids. For example, usability testing has revealed that tablets and other touch screen devices are more intuitive and appealing to young children than a clunky keyboard and mouse. In addition, we’re experimenting with game mechanics that use a computer’s microphone and web cam, and require children to clap or make gestures – to jump or use their hands to make moves in a game. We’re also conducting experiments with augmented reality, immersive world environments, and 3D-rendered collaborative play. It’s critical that we understand how these technologies work and we are partnering with a tremendous set of technologists and producers like Professor Blair MacIntyre from Georgia Tech and Bill Shribman from WGBH in Boston to unleash the learning potential of each platform. At the same time, we know that a three year old needs a very different match of technology than a five year old, so everything we do is driven by age-appropriate skill and curriculum frameworks. We are working with child development experts to ensure that we pair the right technologies with the right skill sets for the right age groups, and we’ve developed a best practices guide to help PBS KIDS producers make the right matches when designing their transmedia content.
In addition to creating highly engaging, developmentally appropriate transmedia content for kids, public media understands the critical importance of the context in which the content is used. To that end, public media recently launched the PBS KIDS Lab website (www.pbskids.org/lab) to provide guidance on how to use our transmedia content to strengthen adult-child relationships, and how to integrate our transmedia content into formal and informal home, school, and out-of-school learning environments. The Lab website is home for a growing set of home, classroom, and community activities as well as resources for parents, caregivers, and educators so they can be well-informed mediators of the media for their students and children.
Empowering the adults in children’s lives to be knowledgeable transmedia mediators is the goal behind our Ready To Learn-funded partnerships with the Boston University School of Education (BU-SED), with Chicago Public Schools Virtual Pre-K and K (VPK) program, and with the Campaign for Grade Level Reading (CGLR). BU-SED is piloting and testing teaching modules to help preschool teachers successfully integrate media into their classrooms to enhance students’ learning, and VPK is creating resources to bridge learning at home and in school. CGLR is partnering with us to create a free bi-lingual mobile app for Android and IOS platforms that will be launching later this year. The mobile app will be designed to equip parents of children ages birth to five with insights on the stages of their children’s growth and will feature a variety of ways to foster literacy and math development through intergenerational on-screen activities (for parents of children ages 2-4) and off-screen activities (for parents of children ages 0-2).
Assessing the impact of our transmedia content is key and renowned third-party researchers including WestEd, EDC, and SRI Interactional are conducting the formative and summative evaluations to test the efficacy of our approach in both formal and informal settings. In addition, public media is working with UCLA CRESST to prototype a progress tracking system that will feature a COPPA-compliant identify system, sophisticated data analysis tools, and reporting applications that equip parents and educators with the means to measure children’s progress across multiple platforms, in real time.
Our transmedia approach to learning requires all of us who work in this space to turn our attention to capacity-building in the field, including high-quality teacher professional development, family training, and a push for a national policy movement to equip America’s Title I elementary schools and early childcare centers in underserved communities with cutting-edge digital technology tools, so that our children, both in school and in out-of-school settings, are not left behind.
Wow…very cool Rob. Thanks for sharing out this information!