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Back in 2010, I was a library media specialist in an elementary school. I began to notice that as the years passed, my students were becoming more and more disengaged with the printed book, were becoming expert multitaskers and thrived in a more participatory type of environment. I knew the debate was not about e-books vs. print, but rather the STORY and how it was EXPERIENCED by my students. As a result, I decided to try a little experiment, I picked one of the grades I taught (fifth grade) and made it my quest to seek out 'interactive' children's literature and compare those experiences to our experiences with the ones we had with print. I documented some of my findings in this Edutopia piece and a few years later, Joyce Valenza wrote a wonderful post about it here. It was at that time that I stumbled upon the concept of transmedia storytelling. I immediately was captivated by how entertainment properties used these techniques to deepen engagement, brand loyalty and ultimately increase their revenues. I wondered how we as educators could leverage those same techniques to reach and engage our learners in ways that were yet unknown to us. I even went on to suggest that transmedia storytelling could serve as a new model of learning for this digital age.
