ABOUT OUR PROJECT

Mi vida en el pozo is a Transmedia Narrative project that aims to exploit the extraordinary power of digital platforms to transform the study of literary texts and cultural aspects of Spanish as a foreign language into a unique experience of narrative creation and collaboration. It is inscribed in a genre of suspense and science fiction. It tries to immerse students in a dynamic narrative world in which the language they learn becomes alive and they themselves, following a constructivist thinking, become the creators of their knowledge. You are probably wondering: What is Transmedia Storytelling? For CarlosA. Scolari, when we talk about Transmedia Storytelling "we are not talking about an adaptation from one language to another (for example, from book to movie), but about a strategy that goes much further and develops a narrative world that encompasses different media and languages". We will try to summarise it with this short video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tx-A9Ekrgw&feature=emb_logo

The possibilities for storytelling are infinite, each platform allows to develop different aspects of our narrative fabric, and the reader changes roles as they enter the story with their comments, ideas and opinions, contributing to expand the story even further. From a didactic point of view, transmedia storytelling offers us the possibility of practising the language through different levels of linguistic knowledge, practising different skills, and opens the doors to interdisciplinary and cultural dialogue. The padlock is removed and the imagination of students and teachers is allowed to run wild. The teacher, through the characters of the teacher and the commissioner, guides the narration without taking away their freedom to invent, offering them continuous stimuli to create.

https://pixabay.com/images/id-4503992/

Our starting point

Our adventure began in December 2020 with the reading of a micro-story: "El pozo" by Luis Mateo Díez. Compared to the original, the text underwent a change, or rather it was adapted by bringing Alberto's age closer to that of the project's recipients so that they could identify more with the characters, family problems, interpersonal relationships, and exploit all the characteristics, experiences of adolescence and the knowledge acquired in their baccalaureate course. The text was published in the blog "blablabalbo" of our school and thanks to a few questions and the use of the mentimeter application we started to activate several mental associations around the image of the well, and above all to ask ourselves the following question: What happened to Alberto? Can we think of an extension of the micro-story?

For this, it was necessary to enter more into the narrative construction and to understand that the characters are the real engine of our machine. V. Propp's "The morphology of the story" helped us to better understand the functions. We also clarified some terms and concepts related to cinema. From there, each student began to elaborate his or her continuation and the different characters were born. In a second moment, we put together the different pieces of our puzzle, and the individual writing became collective: a single story in which, as Henry Jenkins explains, "the group functions as a whole that brings its knowledge into play in a more complex way".

What is the purpose?

Mi vida en el pozo aims to go beyond the frontal classroom and explore new didactic paths in which the learning process can be transformed into a true individual and collective experience, exploiting the changes introduced in 21st century communication and digital technology. Overcoming the traditional way in which the student plays the role of receiver and passively allows himself to be led by the teacher. We must go further by remembering that the learning process must produce experiences that remain engraved in us and become part of our linguistic and cultural baggage, just like any moment in life: a trip with friends that awakens emotions and memories in the subject. Bringing a transmedia narrative project into the classroom means going beyond the static units of the textbook, choosing an element (in our case the well) and including grammatical, lexical, cultural, literary and interdisciplinary elements, without forgetting the transversal aspects necessary for the personal, moral and social development of our students. Mi vida en el pozo hides in itself multiple interdisciplinary connections with: Italian literature, German literature, English literature, history of art, computer science, education for citizenship.