T is for transmedia. If you haven’t heard of this concept, don’t you worry! You are going to be a transmedia pro after reading this post.

Transmedia is a technique of storytelling which tells a single story across several different media platforms and formats. This was honestly a hard concept for me to grasp until I put it into practice. An example of transmedia storytelling would be taking the book, The Hunger Games, and breaking it up into several different formats. This could include posting something on Twitter, completing a Google Form, doing a scavenger hunt, and taking a quiz on the material in the book. Learn more about transmedia here.

This technique is gaining popularity due to its engagement with students. It is much easier to remember a book’s storyline by making learning about it fun! I know that when I am able to use different platforms to discuss a subject it helps me really retain the information that I need to.

In a course, we broke into groups and each group had to make their own transmedia project out of a book of our choosing. My group thought it would be interesting to appeal to an older audience, middle or high school grades, and chose the book, The Maze Runner, by James Dashner. Here is some information about the story.

For our project, we created a website for our home base. On this webpage, we had links to activities involving a quiz to discover which character you are most similar to, a Sphero activity, a Breakout box, an Actionbound scavenger hunt, and a Gamification sheet. Here is a link to my post about Gamification. This project was hard work, but was so satisfying once it was completed! I feel so proud of how it turned out. My specific piece of the project was the Actionbound aspect. Our website is linked here! Feel free to explore around and discover a bit more about The Maze Runner.

How to use it in the classroom:

  • I would love to do a similar assignment where students are grouped up and have to create their own transmedia project.
  • Some ideas of transmedia assignments could be: creating a Kahoot about a book, making a board game related to class, or using one of the tools mentioned in my post. There are so many creative ways this technique can be used to transform learning.
  • Here is a page with some more fun ideas!