Transmedia Literacy: Exploiting transmedia skills and informal learning strategies to improve formal education

The research will focus on teens (12-18 years old), an age characterized by a short but intensive experience in the use of new media and digital technologies. Most of the teenagers have been using digital technologies for a few years, new media is their `natural environment¿ and many of them should be considered advanced users. The aim will be to map the transmedia practices and informal learning strategies applied by young boys and girls the team will simultaneously apply an ethnographic approach based on a survey, interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. According to Castells (2007) `there is a cultural and technological gap between today's youth and a school system that has not evolved along with the society and the digital environment¿. In this context the TRANSLITERACY Project explores one of the topics proposed by the ICT 31 ¿ 2014: Human-centric Digital Age call: the relationships between (new) media, technology and education in a hyper-connected age where the limits between offline and online have been blurred. The project will not only explore how young people deal with transmedia practices in informal learning environments: it will propose a series of initiatives to introduce those experiences into the formal learning system.