Transmedia & Education: Some Thoughts

In an recent interview with Peter Gutierrez (@Peter_Gutierrez) about transmedia and education I suggest: 

 “Long before the terminology was introduced, teachers found that students often responded more deeply to fictional works by means of the film adaptation. Today we can tell stories—albeit differently—in many different media, powering a new form of ‘comparative literature.’”

The quote ran in a post entitled "Every Platform Tells A Story: Transmedia Has the Power to Make Any Topic More Vivid and Personal," which ran in the School Library Journal's blog THE DIGITAL SHIFT. 

Now Gutierrez has run a longer version of his interview with me called "Talking Transmedia" over on "Connect the Pop," his own blog at SLJ, in time to promote my appearance on Saturday at the WyrdCon convention on transmedia and related storytelling forms. (Thanks Peter!) Even though I'm not on the "transmedia and education" panel, this may be relevant.

I was struck by one of my quotes, which frankly I don't remember uttering: 

We must assure that learning by digital natives doesn’t stop at the door of the school or the library—in a sense, students are immersed in the process of discovery and learning 24/7. How do we harness their innate curiosity and their pervasive technical skills in service to learning? Put another way, how can we leverage young people’s appetite for media consumption in service to fundamental learning objectives (what is a story? what are the building blocks of a story?). So how do modern storytelling models help students learn how to learn?  —that’s a skill that will transcend school and serve them throughout their lives.