Development of a virtual convening space for parenting: Empowering parents in schools and the educational process


This project is a result of an Emerging Media Initiative (EMI) grant to support parenting in the community. Dr. Sheron Fraser-Burgess is the Principal Investigator for this project that is supported by Dr. Stuve and the Center for Technology in Education (CTE).

Overview: This project will develop, test, and promote a web portal to support parental engagement in schools and the education of their children. The portal will explore the use of emerging media and new forms of interaction designed to promote discourse and empower parents. The interactions will range from simple discussion boards to podcasts to Second Life modules, all designed to provide a collaborative of local agencies with a platform to coordinate services, share resources, and engage parents and teachers in the process.

This project is guided by a single overarching question: What role might online, emerging media serve in the empowerment of parents in the educational development of their children in schooling contexts? This project proposes to build an interactive web site that can host at least three kinds of online interactions: A Second Life world for parents, podcasts, and text-based content such as blogs. Specifically, there are four interrelated goals in the project, each with two objectives:
  1. Engage parenting service providers
    • Identify and organize at least two community agencies that can provide resources and guidance to the project
    • Provide training and support to representatives from these agencies to contribute to the portal’s clearinghouse of resources.
  2. Promote dyadic relationships among families and schools
    • Increase opportunities for collaboration between schools and parents with the portal’s resource clearinghouse and discussion tools.
    • Model and capture co-decision-making among parents and schools pilot study with selected participants.
  3. Provide new forms of technology-mediated engagement for parents
    • Provide text-based discourse and podcast content on parenting and schools
    • Construct a Second Life environment to provide simulated experiences for interaction
  4. Harness “funds of knowledge” (Moll, 2005) to build upon the social and cultural capital (Bordieu, 1977) within households
    • Produce short video vignettes during pilot study of how families and schools might use the portal
    • Provide opportunities for teachers and parents to experience the “households” of families through the vignettes and Second Life.