Blog Post 5: Transmediation

Understanding transmediation could be a crucial step in improving education systems and encouraging deeper learning. There are a number of ways that one may learn something, but in schools, too often students are left to rely on language only. In reality, there are numerous ways to gain understanding about things. This includes learning through music, visual arts, theatre, dancing etc. In the text from the Percy (1982) quote on page 456, it is emphasized that language is often thought to be a core human trait, but creating and using symbols may be even more human. Essentially, that is how transmediation works. You take your understanding of one artifact and translate it across mediums such as dance where you may bring an idea to life, creating a dance to demonstrate a pivotal scene or theme in the book. Verbocentrism (having a bias towards language and devaluing different forms of vocalization) limits students. They become passive learners in verbocentrist environments, but by using transmediation students have the ability to construct and expand understanding.

For middle school, I went to a smaller school that approached learning slightly differently than the average public school (like my high school). I think that transmediation is a big reason for this difference. In high school, there was a lack of creativity and room for personal interpretation with learning. When we explored an academic unit in class, the idea of translation between mediums was not made very important, and we did not do a lot of creative work. Every now and then, maybe we would do something creative like a project, but this was not consistent. Most often, we learned by listening to the teacher, a verbocentrist approach. In middle school, however, we did activities which resemble that of the example in the text where the student drew falling stars and hearts to represent each grandmother from a story read in class. This occurred much less often in high school, and I would say that the things that I learned in middle school could be applied to life easier than what I learned in high school. 

Whenever we picked up a text or learned about an idea in my middle school, we would read it, discuss it, and open ourselves to interpretations of symbols, perspectives, and meanings. We would translate our interpretations into creative writing such as playwriting, for example. While furthering our understanding of the text, we also furthered understandings about the associated themes, lessons and other learning opportunities beyond the base story itself. When discussing the base story of a book, there is not much room for interpretation. Either something happened in the book, or it did not. When you begin to look deeper than the words, however, you may notice symbols or themes present throughout the book that require further analysis and even individual interpretation. I remember reading Lord of the Flies by William Golding and 1989 by George Orwell in middle school. There is so much symbolism in those books beyond the words themselves, and simply reading the book and taking a quiz about what happened will make it more difficult to deepen understanding of the interwoven themes and recurring symbols within the text. 

References

Siegel, M. (1995). More than words: The generative power of Transmediation for learning. Canadian Journal of Education / Revue Canadienne De L'éducation, 20(4), 455. doi:10.2307/1495082