Children Learning by Observing and Pitching In to community endeavours in online gaming communities (Los niños Aprenden por medio de Observar y Acomedirse a las actividades de la comunidad en los juegos en línea)

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine how a Latinx eight-year-old child’s participation in an online gaming community supported his involvement in a way of learning termed Learning by Observing and Pitching In (LOPI). Specifically, we focus on how the way that the online gaming community was organized allowed the child to be incorporated to contribute to a range of the online gaming community’s activities. In the two examples, we reveal how the child leveraged digital tools to coordinate fluidly and complete shared endeavours with others in his gaming environments. Moreover, through in-depth analyses of the child’s video gaming activity, we argue that children learn by observing gamer-produced media and pitch in to online gaming communities through their gameplay. As such, the article has implications for how children participate through LOPI in virtual communities through their everyday media practices. We end with a discussion on how contexts organized around play, such as online gaming communities, can be fruitful sites of learning in which children develop digital literacies by observing and pitching in.