This paper is based on a PhD research now in progress at the Department of Education of University of Barcelona, under the mentorship of Esbrina Research Group.

Following authors as Area (2001b), Cuban (2001), Gros (2002), Sancho (1988, 2002), Charlot (2008), Hargreaves (1991, 2005), Maffesoli, (1993, 1990), Prensky (2001), O'Reilly (2005), Carrington (2008); Thumine Livingston, 2003; Liberman, (1984) and Lankshear Knobel (2007, 2006B), Buckingham (2008, 2006, 2005, 2003), Livingstone, (2010, 2008), Jenkins (2006), Colins (2005, 2001), Jewitt (2009), Lemke (2009); Selwyn (2011, 2005) this project departs from the idea that technologies and the electronic devices are nowadays developing faster than we had never imagined, and they have begun to change the ways we communicate, teach, learn and investigate. Teachers and students are experiencing new forms of interaction and social relations, and this fact has been transforming the very meaning of education and knowledge. Today, learning occurs in multiple contexts, and many of them happen beyond the classroom.

In that context, the overall objective of this study is to understand how students learn inside and outside the school from their relationship with different media and languages. Following this aim, some of the research questions are: How does multi-literacy help the students to build skills and knowledge within the border that connects the school with their daily lives outside the institution? How do they give meaning to this in border experiences? What can we learn from their narratives and interpretations about significant learning experiences?

Cohabiting with miscellaneous cultures, young people have learning experiences that go far beyond what is prescribed in the subdivision curriculum. Dwelling on the borders that connect the inside and outside of the classroom, they develop skills to roam cultures. Young people create, produce, learn and communicate something. But how do they signify it? What are the skills and competencies they learn beyond what is prescribed in the curriculum? What can we learn to improve our proposals in the classroom?

Focusing on the methodological development of the research, our particular objective with this paper is to contribute to the discussions about the role of the ethnographer in online settings. More precisely, we will present some methodological issues that emerge during the field work, starting with a virtual ethnography. From that moment, having access to some of the virtual spaces the students use outside the school, the researcher needed to face the tensions resulting from combining her position as “a researcher doing participant observation in the school”, with the role of a “facebook friend”. Therefore, some of the questions we will explore in our paper are:

• What are the advantages and limitations of carrying out a methodology that combines online and face to face data collection?

• How to translate the concept of participant observation to online contexts?

• How to dealt with notions of "public" and "private" when doing online ethnography?

• How to deal with the specific ethical issues emerging with the virtual ethnography?

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