The idea that learning exclusively occurs in institutional settings (schools, universities, etc.) has been questioned for quite a long time. In the 1990s a strong urge to foster lifelong learning abilities emerged, as a way to guarantee that people’s knowledge wouldn't become rapidly obsolete in an ever-changing world (OCDE, 1996; Bauman, 2005). With the new millennium, and in hand with the impressive development and implementation of digital technologies, the ideas of progressive educationists such as John Dewey, Celestin Freinet, etc., about learning taking place in any environment people happen to be, seem to be back in action. As a result, now we do not only speak about lifelong learning, but also about life-wide and life-deep learning (Banks, Au, Ball, Bell, et al., 2007).

Today, a large number of people’s environments happen to be digital, and literally bombarded by aural, visual and sensorial stimuli providing them with very distinctive life and learning experiences. School is still a fundamental part in the life of students, in the least for the amount of hours they should dedicate there, and the effects that school success or failure have in people’s lives. However, now-a-days school has to “compete” for the students’ attention with the rest of the social, cultural and technological environments (Lankshear; Knobel, 2001;  Lanham, 2006). In this competition, according to the increasing school disengagement and dropouts rates (Willms, 2003¸ Skinner, Furrer, Marchand; Kindermann,  2008),  school does not seem to be in the strongest position. In this fashion, neglecting or rejecting students' experiences, knowledge and skills gained outside school does not seem to be the best strategy (Sancho, 2009).

School cannot deny the fact that Web2.0 is becoming a “perfect” environment for expressing the “self” as a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services —such as social networking sites, wikis, folksonomies, weblogs (blogs), social bookmarking, podcasts, RSS feeds, and so on— aim to facilitate authorship, creativity, collaboration and sharing between users, and effective information handling. An environment ideally suited for multiliterate users (Cope & Kalanski, 2000). Young people’s recurrent activity with these technologies fundamentally shapes their notions of communication, knowledge management, learning, and even personal and social values (Oblinger; Oblinger, 2005; Howe; Strauss, 2000).

 
These situations raise a set of questions such us: How do students communicate, express themselves and learn in and outside school? How do schools use digital technology?  To what extent are students’ learning experiences in and out of school interconnected, or the opposite? Are students’ learning experiences out of school “interfering” with or supporting school learning?

The RTD project “Living and learning with new literacies inside and outside the secondary school: contributions to reduce truancy, exclusion and disaffection of young students” (MICINN- EDU2011-24122) aims to explore if there is a gap or otherwise between what the school believes that learning is (in general, listening to the teacher, making exercises and accounting for a reproductive test or exam) and how young people learn outside school when they build digital trading communities with colleagues and use new literacies.

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