My Group's Transmedia Learning Project:

Everybody loves a good story, and the more immersed you get in a story the better it gets. Some of the best and most elaborate stories are told through transmedia storytelling. Even though I hadn’t heard of the term “transmedia” before coming to college, it has been all around me growing up. The meaning of this word is “extending through multiple media platforms”, and transmedia storytelling is an engaging way of digitally spreading out a story for viewers to explore. A popular example of this is “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter”. Logging on to this website provides fans with resources to immerse themselves further into the Harry Potter novels written by J. K. Rowling. These resources range from quizzes to determine one’s Hogwarts house or pet, Harry Potter themed activities to do with Amazon Alexa, Youtube videos of Potter crafts, digital video call backgrounds, video games, and blogs written by fans. As if the Harry Potter novels weren’t good enough, Potter fans have the opportunity to digitally travel to an engaging wizarding world and explore as deeply as they would like. For more information on transmedia storytelling watch the video below this text of a modified Cinderella story.

As fun as transmedia storytelling sounds, it can also be used for learning in the classroom! Teachers can create their own transmedia experience for their students or use resources already online. One already existing educational transmedia project is Inanimate Alice . According to the website, “Inanimate Alice is an ongoing digital novel, an interactive multimodal fiction, relating the experiences of Alice and her imaginary digital friend, Brad, in episodes, journals, and other digital media.” This project is typically used in elementary and middle schools to help students develop literacy in reading, writing, communicating, and 21st century technology.

The great part of transmedia projects is that they don’t just have to be created for education, like Inanimate Alice, to positively contribute to a student’s education. Teachers can use different transmedia experiences to teach students the same literacy skills, as well as show them that reading and learning can be fun. There are many extrinsic motivators created by school systems to get students to love reading, such as AR testing or classroom competitions, but transmedia experiences build a student's intrinsic motivation to read books, write stories, learn more, and take control of their own education. Teachers can allow students to dive further into a book by exploring the digital world which allows students to take their learning as far as they would like and learn how to create their own stories. Transmedia experiences can also be incorporated in lesson plans by teaching students about any topic using multiple media platforms and tools. Check out the video below labeled "Transmedia in the Classroom" explaining ways to use transmedia in the classroom, including an example of students that took a field trip to the zoo while staying inside the school.

I would introduce transmedia experiences to students in all grade levels, but younger students in elementary and middle school would probably benefit the most from these experiences. They help teach students at a young age to love reading, writing, learning, and exploring. At older ages, it could be beneficial to teach students to create their own transmedia projects because it introduces them to a large variety of technological resources and helps them further develop both creative and critical thinking. In my Intro to Instructional Technology for Educators class at NCSU we were assigned a group project to create our own transmedia project. We did our project on the first book of the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series by Jeff Kinney. Each person in my four person group created an experience using a different media platform. Together we produced a character quiz using the platform EX.CO, an interactive “choose your own mini storyline” quiz using Microsoft Powerpoint, a cartoon character creator using the website “itch.io”, and a review of the lessons Greg Heffley taught readers using VideoScribe. To create this project we had to explore different websites, and I even learned a new “Zoom” tool to use in Microsoft Powerpoint that I had not heard of before. You can view our project as well as my portion of it using the following links.

Creating transmedia projects develop digital literacy critical to the 21st century. Our group project required lots of research, creative thinking, and exploration of different websites. Using transmedia experiences in a classroom requires the same, and develops literacy in reading, writing, communication, independent learning, and technology. I would encourage all teachers to help their students build literacy in all these areas by incorporating transmedia experiences into your classroom. Students will love it and engage themselves in the immersive experience!