1.11 Reading Across Media
Many media literacy teachers already use media as a core element of their teaching. For others, this approach may be new and unfamiliar. Media scholar, Henry Jenkins, says:
Previous research has demonstrated that cross-platform media experiences can support children’s learning. For example, recent research on transmedia initiatives sponsored by PBS Ready to Learn has found that children as young as 3-5 benefit from experiencing educational media content on multiple, linked platforms (Pasnik et al, 2011). Other research has focused on how carefully designed transmedia experiences encourage inquiry and collaboration. For example, I Love Bees, described by designer Jane McGonigal (2007) as an “interactive” and “distributed” fiction, invited participants to piece together the backstory of the video game Halo 2. As McGonigal notes, audiences were invited to “collaboratively author” the story, pooling knowledge, sharing skills, and figuring out clues together.
Several key justifications/motivations integrate media more effectively into learning and teaching practices. First, as modes of human expression expand and diversify, the language arts curriculum has to train students in these new forms of reading and writing. As more stories move across media, we need to talk with our students about what it means to read a transmedia story and what it means to conceive and write a transmedia story. These concerns are closely related to what Gunther Kress refers to as multimodality and multiliteracy. Kress argues that we need to teach students the affordances of different media through which we can communicate information and help them foster the rhetorical skills they need to convey effectively what they want to say across different platforms.
As educators, we need to model the effective use of media platforms in the classroom, a practice that would support what Howard Gardner has told us about multi-intelligences. Some students learn better through alternate modes of communications; a lesson is most effective when conveyed through more than one mode of expression. We can reinforce a text through visuals or activities we communicate through spoken words or written texts. But we also need to consider how multiple platforms of communication can re-enforce our current methods in the classroom. Consider, for example, the campaign which Campfire Media developed to help launch Game of Thrones, a campaign that intentionally sought to make the story world come alive to potential viewers by creating a range of sensory experiences; by playing on our sense of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell; and by immersing us in a rich fictional realm.
In addition to keeping students engaged, complex narratives offer rich opportunities for students to participate in active, inquiry-based learning. Transmedia engages multiple literacies, including textual, visual, and media literacies, as well as multiple intelligences. Such stories are highly engaging and allow for important social sharing among collaborators. The non-linear nature of transmedia narratives shares characteristics with spiral curriculum, in which instruction loops back to concepts multiple times to facilitate different connections and deepen understanding.
One of the things media scholars do is to trace what we call migratory stories, stories that get told over and over again, as they move across different media and across national borders. We want to understand what changes as the same story gets told in different contexts by different authors for different audiences through different media. And we find this activity works best when we compare multiple versions that share similar themes and inspiration.As we see throughout this project, classic narratives—from Joan of Arc to Moby-Dick—have been told many times across history, encouraging us to compare interpretations and expansions of the original. Reading across media in these cases may encourage us to draw comparisons between different adaptations of the same story, including attention to the uses they make of their media, the ways they have been adjusted to the perspectives of different kinds of audiences (across time, across national contexts, etc.), and the different interpretations artists make of the core themes of the work in various versions. Moby-Dick functions here as an example of a migratory story.
Reading across media may also take the form of transmedia storytelling, a practice that is gaining great interest in the contemporary entertainment industry. Jenkins (2006) defines a transmedia narrative as a story that “unfolds across multiple media platforms with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole.” While it is possible to experience a narrative by interacting with one element of a transmedia story, the reader must navigate multiple, interconnected media to decode the entire story. Transmedia stories such as Harry Potter, Lost, and Heroes, have proven to motivate ongoing participation among audiences using these methods. Transmedia storytelling follows a logic of "additive comprehension" -- i.e. each element makes a unique contribution to our experience of the story. While no reader is apt to consume every piece of the franchise, they each hope to gain new insights by seeking out new material.
Previous research has demonstrated that cross-platform media experiences can support children’s learning. For example, recent research on transmedia initiatives sponsored by PBS Ready to Learn has found that children as young as 3-5 benefit from experiencing educational media content on multiple, linked platforms (Pasnik et al, 2011). Other research has focused on how carefully designed transmedia experiences encourage inquiry and collaboration. For example, I Love Bees, described by designer Jane McGonigal (2007) as an “interactive” and “distributed” fiction, invited participants to piece together the backstory of the video game Halo 2. As McGonigal notes, audiences were invited to “collaboratively author” the story, pooling knowledge, sharing skills, and figuring out clues together.
Several key justifications/motivations integrate media more effectively into learning and teaching practices. First, as modes of human expression expand and diversify, the language arts curriculum has to train students in these new forms of reading and writing. As more stories move across media, we need to talk with our students about what it means to read a transmedia story and what it means to conceive and write a transmedia story. These concerns are closely related to what Gunther Kress refers to as multimodality and multiliteracy. Kress argues that we need to teach students the affordances of different media through which we can communicate information and help them foster the rhetorical skills they need to convey effectively what they want to say across different platforms.
As educators, we need to model the effective use of media platforms in the classroom, a practice that would support what Howard Gardner has told us about multi-intelligences. Some students learn better through alternate modes of communications; a lesson is most effective when conveyed through more than one mode of expression. We can reinforce a text through visuals or activities we communicate through spoken words or written texts. But we also need to consider how multiple platforms of communication can re-enforce our current methods in the classroom. Consider, for example, the campaign which Campfire Media developed to help launch Game of Thrones, a campaign that intentionally sought to make the story world come alive to potential viewers by creating a range of sensory experiences; by playing on our sense of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell; and by immersing us in a rich fictional realm.
In addition to keeping students engaged, complex narratives offer rich opportunities for students to participate in active, inquiry-based learning. Transmedia engages multiple literacies, including textual, visual, and media literacies, as well as multiple intelligences. Such stories are highly engaging and allow for important social sharing among collaborators. The non-linear nature of transmedia narratives shares characteristics with spiral curriculum, in which instruction loops back to concepts multiple times to facilitate different connections and deepen understanding.
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