Abstract:

Internet and Web 2.0 offer immense opportunities to enhance some of the classic principles of education and disclosure of knowledge in general. The genres of interactive nonfiction, applied in the context of information transfer, and characterized by the interactive documentary, are becoming pedagogic tools and teaching materials used by the teacher in different contexts. One of the essential assumptions of the traditional documentary is the desire to organize a story in such a way that it is informative and entertaining at the same time. In this respect, the interactive format must follow tradition and attempt to offer similar experiences that combine as efficiently, originally and attractively as possible, an entertainment with a didactic and/or educational dimension. This is possible mainly as a result of the combination of the different modes of navigation and interaction in an application, which enables a multiple exchange between the work and the user.

The purpose of this article is to study the process of convergence between two apparently seemingly very different areas of communication, namely the evolution of the documentary genre on one hand, and the emergence of digital media and their rapid expansion in various fields in recent decades, on the other. While the history of the documentary begins half a century before that of the digital medium, the two processes have progressed towards to a very interesting point of convergence at the present time.The two genres have come together in a medium, the Internet, with infrastructure and technologies that enable greater accessibility than ever experienced, in terms of information and content, speed of navigation, high technical performance and interaction between different users. This has all led to the emergence of different formats and the creation of new genres, such as the interactive documentary, which is a result of a double fusion of, on one hand, the audiovisual (documentary genre) and interaction (interactive digital media), and, on the other hand, between information (content) and entertainment (interactive interfaces).

In the current ecosystem of digital media, how to display information quickly becomes appreciated when we see how the traditional media (like newspapers) and related audiovisual productions (fiction and nonfiction) with certain forms of exhibition and distribution approach and has increasingly given way to the creation of projects that hybridize the two formulas, information (content) with entertainment (fun). Some of the pedagogical principles in teaching give us clues about how to approach the use of Web 2.0 and future versions. Some of the advantages posed by these new technologies in educational uses are: open possibilities to create networks of learning; foster cooperation and collaboration between those who wish to learn (while opening paths to reinforce the personal differences and autonomy); facilitate the exchange of information and resources; facilitate the dissemination and presentation of results and work; facilitate the replenishment, storage and indexing works; provide new ways for the evaluation; provide greater flexibility in many ways.

Keywords:

Nonfiction, interactive, documentary, digital, education, 2.0, natives, web, navigation, transmedia, storytelling.