ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we take an expanded view of children’s popular media to critically consider the design affordances, constraints, histories, and possibilities in Barbie transmedia (Jenkins, 2006; Kinder, 1991), the flows of licensed goods in popular media franchises that range from children’s playthings to everyday consumer products. Although children are living in immersive flows of increasingly influential transmedia, in this era of high-stakes tests and narrowing curricula, they rarely have an opportunity at school to play, produce, or critically respond to popular media. Instead, we must look to out-of-school play spaces, like virtual worlds or children’s museums, to find rich opportunities for children to play and design their favorite transmedia. These sites can inspire educators to redesign curricula to make them more relevant and vibrant, including increased recognition of child-directed design and play with popular media as crucial literacies for twenty-first century learning. However, it is just as important to be prepared to critically respond to and productively teach with transmedia’s problematic texts.
