Abstract:

Given continuing advances in communications technology, e.g. streaming, ZOOM virtual classrooms, the newest Iphone, etc. across professions, educators are currently afforded an expanding menu of ways to use selected stories, both fictional and factual, in their work with students, perhaps too now out of necessity because of COVID-19 and classroom life since the pandemic. And at a time when content streaming and movie-viewing at home are at all-time highs, this cross-media approach can help educators evaluate and optimize the use of popular movie adaptations with the books they are drawn from, to promote social, emotional, and academic development with learners. We therefore ask: what does easy access today for students via digital technology mean for the use of stories about social relations in educating students/learners? And what's cross media?

Cross-media means telling a story via several different media platforms. However, this does not mean that the story is just ‘displaced’ from one platform to the next, such as simply adapting a novel into a movie. True cross-media stories use each platform to add something new to the overall narrative, be it by offering background stories, changing the perspective on an event or character through different viewpoints, or continuing a story arch that was left off in another medium. In cross-media work we use the visual and written texts together, and as equal partners. This flies in the face of typical film use in schools, oftentimes relegated to being a "reward" for first slogging through the novel or book.

This session upends standard practices, demonstrating the value of using stories that “cross” from one media format to another, together --and as equal partners. We’ll experience cross-media methodology with a story that “crosses” from a play --Bashir Lazhar by Evelyne de Chenelière-- to the Academy Award-nominated film adaptation, Monsieur Lazhar, by Philippe Falardeau: –two tellings of the uplifting story of a French-Canadian elementary school reeling from a beloved teacher’s death, and a substitute teacher’s efforts to put shattered classroom lives back together. Our thought is to build the case for teachers' use of cross-media in their own professional development first, in order for them to then use cross-media methodology with and on behalf of their students.

Keywords:

Media literacy, cross-media, language arts, comprehension, professional development, popular movies.