Ricarose Roque, Karina Lin, Richard Liuzzi

Abstract

Creating, designing, and building with computing have gained recognition as important activities for children, but few actually engage in these creative opportunities. Social support from parents can be essential to engaging children, but for parents with limited backgrounds in computing, they are often unsure what roles they can play. For parents to develop supportive roles, they must gain first-hand experience in creative computing for themselves and with their children. In this paper, we examine the experiences of parents participating in a community-based program called Family Creative Learning, where families design and invent together using creative technologies like Scratch. We describe three case studies of how parents developed multiple roles such as collaborator, teacher, and learner as they created and collaborated with their children on technology-based projects. We discuss design opportunities to provide meaningful experiences for parents and children to build projects and build supportive roles around computing.