Educational television beyond the TV set : educational media convergence in the UK and a proposal for the Mexican model

• Main Author: Zorrilla Abascal, Maria Luisa
• Published: University of East Anglia 2008
• Subjects: 371.330941
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.490668

This thesis is about the convergent production and use of educational resources, particularly content for television and the internet. This is the result of an enquiry framed by Cultural Studies and New Media Studies, on how educational television and websites are converging in an era in which the boundaries between different media are disappearing. The vision leading this project assumes that convergence should be about transforming the televisual text across media, promoting meaningful connections (intertextualities) among different modalities, and not merely relocating and adapting a single content to different technological devices. The case that better reflects this understanding of educational TV-Internet convergence is BBG Schools in the United Kingdom, which includes television series and corresponding websites. The project is structured following three main lines of enquiry: a) Content generation (institutional sphere), b) Content itself (intertextual dimension) and c) Content users (teachers and children in the classroom), these three addressed through a multimethodological strategy. The methodological approach for the content generation line was based on interviews with BBC key actors and documentary sources. The text analysis was approached through an instrument developed following Literary theory, around . the concept of intertextuality. The uses and users line was explored through media sessions in British schools, with six different age groups using observation, participant observation, interviews, questionnaires and learning activities. Some concepts and issues explored through this investigation are: media regulations, organisational culture in media industries, production models, types of transplatform intertextualities and the cultures of media use in the classroom (roles, practices, settings, assumptions and perceptions). The findings of the three phases co-flow in a proposal for educational media to be implemented in Mexico and/or in similar contexts.