A New Society, a new education!

by Laura Fleming

"Like so many of the most useful digital technologies finding their way into education, transmedia originated in the broad field of entertainment. Multi-platform storytelling fed the desire of audiences for complex and participative narratives. Today we have transmedia pioneers, such as Jeff Gomez, Lance Weiler, and others, creating intricate narratives that are told through books, comics, video games, Web shorts, feature films, virtual worlds, and many other media. Effectively implemented, such transmedia events are pervasive and have led to a resurgence of narrative in the conjoined worlds of entertainment, marketing, and commercial media.

"From Entertainment to Education

However, as is so often the case with technologies that take that journey from other contexts into education, the translation is not a simplistic one. In the case of transmedia, it is critical that we modify and redefine the concept in certain ways so that it can contribute as effectively as possible to students’ learning. We know that children and young people perceive media in an integrated way, as a seamless experience, and it has been shown that learning can be enhanced by multi-platform experiences. But in order to exploit the full potential of the technology for learning, in order that we can fully engage with that seamless perception of media that children enjoy, we must think very carefully about the pedagogy or pedagogies we apply to our use of transmedia."