Tag Archives: transmedia

For several years now, children’s literature has been venturing step by step into the digital field, with all the creative force and originality that the domain has shown itself capable of. Beyond the simple digitalization of content in PDF or E-pub format, many producers (Nosy Crow, Tank & Bear, Camera Lucida, Atomic Antelope, and Moobot Studio, to name just a few) are embarking today into digital storytelling and using it to its full potential. The development of immersive environments, auditory…

This post was originally published on the Fred Rogers Center Blog and appears here with permission. This week my colleagues at Education Development Center and SRI International and I are releasing findings from our Prekindergarten Transmedia Mathematics Study. This research is part of Ready to Learn, a partnership between the US Department of Education, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and PBS. The basic premise of Ready to Learn is that it marshals public media resources in support of 2- to…

Today we are thrilled to release a new report, T is for Transmedia: Learning through Transmedia Play. This report, which we have co-authored along with Erin Reilly, and which begins with an introduction by Henry Jenkins, is the product of a year-long collaboration between the Cooney Center and the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. Transmedia is an idea that has evolved over the past decade to describe the complex relationships that exist between media texts, media…

This past Saturday, October 6, kids in over 30 countries in 6 continents participated in the Global Cardboard Challenge, the next chapter from the folks that brought you the short film “Caine’s Arcade.”  The fanfare around the film, featuring a 9 year-old Hispanic boy named Caine’s elaborate handmade cardboard arcade, was the impetus for the formation of the Imagination Foundation.  The non-profit, founded by “Caine’s Arcade” filmmaker Nirvan Mullick, aims to “help find, fund, and foster creativity and entrepreneurship in…

I’ve been spending a lot of time on a playground lately. However, this playground doesn’t have swings or tetherball or a basketball court; this one—the PLAYground—is a transmedia learning tool being developed at the Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC. The PLAYground is the brainchild of Erin Reilly, Managing Director for the Innovation Lab and someone I’ve gotten to work with closely through the JGCC’s partnership with the Lab. Developing the PLAYground is one element of a larger project on participatory learning,…

Film.  It’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about.  Television is, of course, part of our daily lexicon here at the Cooney Center given our Sesame Workshop roots, but movies — not so much.  Last week I had the chance to head out to TIFF Kids (the children’s version of the famous Toronto International Film Festival), where I moderated a panel on transmedia and presented our latest work in the app space. In preparation for a busy few days, I sort of…

Two weeks ago, this blog featured a preview of Robot Heart Stories (R<3S), a 10-day transmedia learning project in which two classrooms in underserved neighborhoods in Montreal (French speaking) and Los Angeles (English speaking) used collaboration and creative problem solving to help a lost robot navigate across North America before hitching a ride back to space with NASA on a launch to the International Space Station, scheduled sometime early next year. The robot (symbolized by a stuffed animal version embedded…

Today, The Electric Company will re-launch its third season with an all new transmedia story, “The Adventures of The Electric Company on Prankster Planet.”  Airing in a new segment at the end of the TV series and a new area of the website, this transmedia story engages and immerses participants in an experience through multiple forms of media, each element making a unique contribution to the story. Here, key members of the interdisciplinary team behind this new transmedia effort share…

Last week I had the opportunity participate in a panel discussion at Sprockets, Toronto’s International Film Festival for Children and Youth (which, by the way, is a FANTASTIC event held in the new and equally fantastic TIFF building). The topic of the panel? Transmedia. Well of course. It seems that transmedia has blossomed into an all-out industry buzz-word — it’s a featured topic at conferences ranging from SXSW to Kidscreen. Rumor even has it that Henry Jenkins is out to…

This post originally appeared in New Media Literacies on October, 25, 2010. I recently attended Digital Hollywood, a digital media trade conference in Los Angeles for executives in the film, television, computer, music, and telecommunications fields. As a Ph.D. student in Communication at USC Annenberg, I attended four panels relevant to my research interests in children and media. These panels were organized around the following themes: immersive touchscreen media, mobile apps, crossmedia content reinvention, and one specifically on children in…