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, 2018a, 2018b), on children's learning and designs for learning (cf. Selander & Kress, 2010; Bezemer & Kress, 2008) on 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, this paper explores the activity of online co-op gaming from a design perspective, based on the assumption that it can be described as "decision-making in situ over time" (van Leeuwen, 2005). By looking at a group of 10-12-year olds' activities within the game Fortnite (Epic games, 2019) the paper investigates gaming as a performative design activity related to learning and meaning making. Building on concepts from multimodal social semiotics and designs for learning, gaming is here elaborated in terms of sequential signmaking processes motivated by interest and shaped in relation to social context and available (material, semiotic and cognitive) resources. 

References

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

Epic games (2019) Fortnite. Online game.

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

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. (2018a) "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 – ett lekfullt sätt att stärka barns och ungas språkutveckling. Sandvikens kommun: Kulturcentrum. 

Lindstrand, F. (2018b) "Signs of genre awareness in young YouTubers' online engagements". Paper presented at 9th International Conference on Multimodality, University of Southern Denmark, August 2018.

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