Transmedia storytelling: Mash&Co educational effects
Mash&Co is a transmedia app focused on 2d animation engaging kids by Mash’s and Periwinkle’s friendship story; the two friends are trying to save forest from the drought. Many of you is wondering the meaning of transmedia. This article will explain its meaning and the reason why we created Mash&Co using this kind of narrative.
Henry Jenkins – an essayist expert in communication– gives this definition in the book Digital Convergence (2006): transmedia storytelling is a type of narrative that moves in different areas of media to enrich its consumption, offering different kinds of user experience.
Thus, media use turns from a passive and individual one to an active and collective experience. It is a phenomenon that began with the media hybridizations, boosted by digital technology in the 2000s.
Transmedia storytelling is not characterized by a narrative developed on one type of media. Its sense is given by the sum of the media involved. So for example digital media narratives continue on an analog media such as a book, creating a unique immersive universe.
WHAT ARE THE EDUCATIONAL EFFECTS OF A TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING?
The immersive component of the transmedia storytelling involves children and students effectively, helping them to think critically, increasing their capacity for interpretation and creative skills.
Mash&Co combines interactive cartoons and mini games episodes, structured independently and connected by a single narrative thread, to immerse preschoolers to social issues and eco-awareness.
Episode after episode children are called to help the protagonists Mash, Periwinkle and other friends in an exploratory game using problem solving dynamics.
Kids are immersed in a fantastic world with original stories and they have to use their logic skills and creativity in order to complete the tasks and help their favourite characters.
READ ALSO: Mash&Co and the 21st century skills.
Moreover, Mash&Co contains a parental corner in which parents or teachers can follow children’s progress and attitudes based on cognitive skills they acquire during playtime.
The entertainment world is increasingly using transmedia storytelling to offer new generations multiple contexts for entertainment and education.
An event dedicated to this trend is Cartoon 360, where our team is going to present Mash&Co transmedia world to different media experts from 29th May to 1st June 2016.
Mash&Co is currently released on the Window Phone and AppStore. Many families from all over the world have already appreciated its value.
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