In Sweden, big efforts are currently being made in what is referred to as the "digitization of school" (cf. Government of Sweden, 2017) and in the work to support media and information literacy (MIL) at a more general level. Since many young people today are deeply engaged in various forms of digital media on the one hand (Swedish Media Council, 2017) while lacking commitment to their education on the other, a focus on digitization and media literacy could perhaps bridge these motivational gaps – at least to some extent, for some pupils. However, instead of listening to and acknowledging children's knowledge and experience within this field there seems to be a tendency to frown upon their engagements in digital media and to describe their activities on digital platforms as potentially harmful.

This paper presents results from of an on-going pilot project, Learning in Digital Wastelands (Lindstrand, 2018), on children's learning and designs for learning (cf. Selander & Kress, 2010; Bezemer & Kress, 2008) in digital arenas outside school. The aim of the project is to investigate meaning-making and designs for learning in digital contexts outside school where children and young people are engaged in multimodal sign-making practices (Kress, 2003; 2010). An incentive is, perhaps naïvely, that this may offer new perspectives on resources and designs for learning suitable for children today.

More specifically, the paper presents a multimodal analysis of the opening sequence of a video posted on YouTube by a nine-year old. By contextualising the video and its modal configuration and orchestration through comparisons with other YouTube videos referred to by this young producer, the paper claims that the video indicates a high level of multimodal genre awareness. As a conclusion it is suggested that a curiosity in what children do outside school could give great leads in terms of how to take pedagogy further and work within genres, modes and media that are relevant to children today. Who knows what genres will be dominant tomorrow (cf. Hyon, 1996; Johns, 2002)?

References

Bezemer, J. & Kress ,G. (2008) Writing in Multimodal Texts. A Social Semiotic Account of Designs for Learning, Written Communication 25(2).

Government of Sweden (2017) "Action on digital transformation", retrieved 20180110 from http://www.government.se/pressreleases/2017/06/action-on-digital-transformation/

Hyon, S. 1996. Genre in three traditions: Implications for ESL. TESOL Quarterly 30(4):693-722.

Johns, A.M. (Ed.). (2002). Introduction. Genre in the classroom. Multiple perspectives. London: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 3-13.

Kress, G. (2003) Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge.

Kress, G. (2010) Multimodality. A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London: Routledge.

Lindstrand, F. (2018, in press) "Relevanta utsvävningar på digitala arenor - om YouTube, literacy och genremedvetenhet" [Relevant dissipations on digital arenas - on YouTube, literacy and genre awareness] in Forsgren Anderung, K. & Folkesson, E. (eds.) Trampolinmodellen [The Trampoline model]. Sandvikens kommun: Kulturcentrum.

Selander, S. and Kress, G. (2010) Design för lärande. Ett multimodalt perspektiv. [Designs for learning. A multimodal perspective]. Stockholm: Norstedts.

Swedish Media Council [Statens Medieråd] (2017) Ungar och medier 2017 [Kids and media 2017]. Retrieved 20180111 from https://statensmedierad.se/publikationer