Plentiful evidence exists at the national level that access to computers and the Internet is lower in low-income households, and in particular the households of low-income, immigrant Latinos and other minorities (NTIAA, 2000).

While the penetration of computers and the Internet into low—income and minority households is on the rise, this increase is far from keeping up with access to computers at school. Access to computers and the Internet is increasing at school, so that currently, virtually every school in America now has access to Internet and computers available for use by students (NCES, 2000). Low -income minority children are beginning to use computers at schools and are being expected to develop competencies in computers as part of schools' implementation of state and school district subject matter and performance standards. The disparity between access to computers at home and school for Latino and other low-income students aggravates already existing concerns about the need to improve Latino family awareness and involvement in their children's schooling. From an intergeneration and family literacy perspective and consistent with the CREDE Program of research on Families, Peers and Community (Cooper and Gandara, 2001), we need to be concerned with developing strategies and a knowledge base addressing ways that Latino immigrant families can have improved access to computers, learn to use computers in ways required of their school children, and to investigate innovative ways that parents and children can learn and communicate together utilizing enabled computers.

Throughout its five years this program served approximately 140 parents and 120 children at 3 sites: Isla Vista School, La Patera School and the Goleta Boys and Girls Club. During the first project year we began by serving 7 parents and 12 children in the spring of 1997 at Isla Vista School. During the second year (1997-98) we ran the project during the fall at Isla Vista School and also at the Goleta Boys and Girls Club. During the third through fifth years (1998-2000) we ran the project at La Patera School. Migration among sites occurred as we found improved opportunities at each successive site to provide the participants with improved access to computer facilities. All three sites were located within a one and one-half mile radius from each other and served a community consisting largely of parents and children from immigrant backgrounds. The number of parent and children participants grew by several individuals each cycle during the last project year. During the 2000-2001 academic year, we served a total of 54 parents and 56 children at our La Patera School site.

Across all five years, the background characteristics of family participants showed many common characteristics. Almost all of the parents were from Mexico, with the exception of two families who were originally from the Punjab, India. All of the Mexican family participants were first-generation immigrants and had children in the elementary grades K through 6, although several families had younger children and infants or older children in junior high or high school. Typically, families ranged in size from 1-5 children. (In the 1999 academic school year, we had a family who had ten children!)

Questionnaire data collected indicated that the majority of fathers worked in manual labor jobs (blue collar jobs) such as restaurant cooks, welders, grocery workers, and factory workers or supervisors, while the mothers worked as hotel maids and house cleaners in addition to their jobs inside the home. The educational background of the adults varied considerably. Many of the parents had only completed elementary school in their native country before being obligated to work; some completed the equivalent of high school in their native country and in two cases the parents had either finished their teaching credential and or masters degrees in their native countries.

By design, given our main target population of first generation immigrant Latino families, our activities used Spanish as primary language of communication. However we did use English as well, and in particular with our Indian family participants for whom English was a second language but who did not speak Spanish. A few parents who had taken English classes and those who were beginning to learn English, practiced English within our program, though instruction of English as a second language was not a formal focus of our program. A number of parents had limited or just basic literacy skills in Spanish as their first language, given attendance only of elementary school. However, we have also had parents with more advanced Spanish literacy skills. One such case was a mother who attended the sessions who had attained her teaching credentials and her masters degree in Mexico. She had immigrated to the United States and was unable to obtain a job similar to the one in Mexico due to her lack of language fluency in English. However, during her participation in our program we could observe her fluency and high level of literacy skills in Spanish through her written documents.

All of the children who participated in this program were familiar with their native language (Spanish) and used Spanish in communication at home. In the project these children used Spanish and occasionally English in communicating with parents. Project staff used either Spanish or English in communicating with children apropos of the topic at hand–e.g., English to discuss school assignments . Children's schooling in our community was entirely in English pursuant to Proposition 224, passed in California in 1998. Project staff confirmed that all children are being schooled in English. The work and publications of the parents and children were produced in both English and Spanish. The language used for communication was left up to the participants.

Our discussion of our research design parallels the outline of our four research goals.

This goal was pursued by conducting a literature review of research on learning and literacy from the perspectives of sociocultural theory , viewing learning and literacy as social accomplishments tied to participation in ongoing communities of practice using literacy as a set of cultural tools for the expression of meaning. Reading research was supplemented by communications and exchanges regarding theory (and connections to practice) with CREDE Center Program 3 (Families, Peers and Community ) investigators, CREDE advisors (in particular Barbara Rogoff and Courtney Cazden) and CREDE external reviewers (in particular Evelyn Jacob and Fred Erickson). The theoretical base we developed was used as the foundation for pursuit of all other goals of the project.

This goal involved investigation of our own practices in implementing learning and literacy activities for parents and children. Methodologically, we pursued this goal by designing and implementing activities to be pursued by parents and children in the project. This was a reflexive process that evolved as we discovered the strengths and limitation of our designed activities and the need to incorporate better the needs and wishes of parent and children participants. As we designed and implemented learning and literacy activities we had to test-out what we could expect parents to learn about using computers, related technology, and the Internet in what amount of time. We also had to test-out strategies and techniques for involving children in joint activities with parents, and when it would be best to allow parents to pursue activities on their own with less involvement of children. We also needed to test-out how to incorporate input from teachers and community members in the design of learning and literacy activities in a manner arguably connected to enhancing parents' knowledge of children's schooling practices and the role of technology as tools for learning and literacy. In pursuing the second goal in the foregoing, we relied on collection and content analyses of ethnographic field notes and video/audio recordings of project sessions informed by our sociocultural theoretical base.

Once our design and implementation of project activities had stabilized, we proceeded to evaluate the effectiveness of our activity designs on parents' learning of elementary computer skills using quantitative methods. For this purpose we relied on pre-post assessment questionnaire administered during the 1998-99 project year and used within group t-tests to establish statistical significance (see Appendix). We did not rely on a comparison group design involving parents who were not project participants. We did not carry out a similar pre-post assessment of children's learning elementary computer skills as most children were already familiar with the elementary skills learned by parents.

Relevant to research Goal 4 below, we did not attempt to evaluate the learning of more complex learning and literacy skills by parents and children using quantitative pre-post assessment methods. Instead, we used ethnographic and discourse analysis methods to study closely how parents and children performed and negotiated complex learning and literacy tasks in order to provide us with a progressive account of the learning activities and development of written products on the computer over time.

This goal involved presenting our findings in the form of a "Strategies Guide Document." The latter document is a separate deliverable product of our project and is intended to help others in planning the implementation of similar workshops and projects serving immigrant families sensitive to local contextual factors and resources. Relevant to this goal we also carried out professional presentations at several meetings and developed an article for journal publication, as indicated at the end of this paper.

This goal involved carrying out a series of close-in studies of learning and literacy practices among parent and children participants. While we were able to conduct a statistical pre-post assessment study of parents' computer learning during one project year, the informal and creative nature of our learning and literacy activities for parents and children were not well-suited for evaluation by quantitative methods.

As an alternative, and consistent with our theoretical base in sociocultural theory we examined the communicative processes of parents and children and how these processes and the contents of communication revealed the participants exercise of agency within the community of practices represented by the project. While our approach was informed by sociocultural theory, this theoretical frame did not determine the findings. Rather we proceeded in an inductive manner, allowing data documenting the interactions and practices of participants as our primary base for drawing inferences about what parents were doing, seeing, and planning as they carried out activities.

For this purpose we relied on ethnographic and discourse analyses of qualitative field notes and audio and video recordings of interaction among participants and interviews of participants, and content analyses of participants' writings. Typically, this methodological strategy involved a triangulation of data. We used qualitative data to create "event maps" of each project session summarizing the main activities that had transpired in a session, and summaries of who had accomplished what, and by what means in a session. Further, we went on to create "structuration maps" tracing connections between participants practices and written products across sessions thereby grounding inferences about the learning and literacy practices that were being acquired/exercised by the participants. These maps are, of course, similar to the "brainstorming maps" used in the K-12 sequence, and helped staff conceptualize our process.

Conduct of each project session was documented by collection of ethnographic field notes, audio and video recordings of project activities, and collection of computer-stored and paper versions of drafts and final documents produced by parents. We also collected participants' products in the form of electronic and paper versions of desk-top publications compiling participants' final version of products disseminated to local community members as well as among participants.

The pre-post assessment used to evaluate parents' learning is found in Appendix One. This Appendix also summarizes the results of pre-post assessment for the 1998-99 project year.

Our work is grounded on a Cultural Psychology perspective (Cole, 1997) building on the theoretical views of Vygotsky and activity theory. From a Cultural Psychology perspective we characterize human learning and development as having a complex origin. Human learning and development operates on four planes simultaneously: the phylogenetic plane, cultural-historical (or sociocultural) plane, ontogenetic plane and microgenetic plane. The phylogentic plane is concerned with the human species' genotypical and phenotypical evolution. This plane is not considered in our work.

More centrally we are concerned with issues arising from considering the remaining three planes. The cultural-historical plane is concerned with the ways in which human practices and artifacts arise and change over time through social aggregation of persons into communities and cultures, (i.e., how human groups and social institutions learn and develop over time in an adaptive manner through the medium of cultural practices). The ontogenetic plane of learning and development refers to learning and development by the individual human organism within the context of his or her social and cultural environment. Finally, the microgenetic plane of learning and development refers to an individual's learning of particular skills and how this comes to affect development.

The term "learning community" is sometimes used to refer to a "community of practice" in order to highlight the importance of learning in a community of practice. This shift in terminology is especially helpful when the goals and practices of a community foreground learning as an explicit goal of a community.

Our Parents, Children, and Computers Project functions as a complex "learning community." The learning community is comprised of not only parents and children, but also comprised of teachers and the research team working in joint collaboration with parents and children (Rogoff, Matusov, and White, 1996). Our learning community has diverse ends reflecting the interests of team members with a common focus centering on development and computer publication of narrative and other writings reflecting learning.

A learning community such as the Parents, Children, and Computers Project brings together participants from school and community to create unique opportunities for exploring learning and its relation joint activities among participants. It's participants bridge multiple communities of practice based on school, community, and family experiences. Parents and children carry out both formal and informal learning through mediated activity in our learning community. Parents are assisted in learning explicit computer skills through mediation provided by more capable others–the university staff, teachers, and community members present. Further parents and children work together informally in practicing computer skills and in researching and expressing cultural values and themes of importance to them. One important research issue we explore in our presentation is an account of how this learning community functions based on our ethnographic observation of practices of the community. These practices include the ways in which parents and children develop an orientation to computers and the progress they make in learning to use computers as exemplified in the activities of the project.

It is important to note that our characterization of the Parents, Children, and Computers Project as a learning community allows for parents and children to have an active and creative role in shaping the practices of the community in addition to our pursuit of specific learning goals for parents. This is very different from the typical social organization of formal classroom settings where learning goals are highly scripted and stress the importance of understanding what can be made possible within the community in a non-prescriptive manner. Our learning community operated in a collaborative and reflexive manner akin to the findings of Rogoff et. al., 1996 wherein the very design of activities over meetings and cycles of meetings adjusted to the needs and values of the participants. This approach is in line with Auerbach's (1995) analysis of the need to implement intergenerational literacy programs that draw on the participant's values and needs as critical components of effective programs for immigrant families.

Another theoretical perspective informing our research is the notion of "authoring of self." This term comes from the work of Bakhtin (1990) and Kozulin (1993, 1998). According to this perspective:"Human thoughts, acts, and intentions can be viewed as authoring, and the emerging self can be viewed as an artifact analogous to the author of a literary work" (Kozulin, 1993). We can view the actions, including the spoken and written communications of participants in the Parents, Children, and Computers Project as authoring of self. In the context of our setting each parent and child is authoring him or herself through the actions they undertake within our learning community, what they say and communicate within the setting, and through the written products they produce that eventuate in project publications. The issue of authoring of self is particular importance to our qualitative research investigating how parents and children interact as they negotiate their writing on a computer, how they show awareness of an audience for their written pieces, and what cultural and social content they express in their writing.

Based on our team's prior experience in working with community groups, we elected to run the project in two annual 10-week cycles with one session per week. We elected 10-week cycles because our prior experience indicated that we would be more likely to maximize regular attendance of sessions if we did not request that our participants commit to an obligation that they could not politely terminate due to a change in family needs and priorities.

Our plan with respect to each ten-week cycle has combined both specific and open goals. On the one hand, we developed a flexible curriculum that would help parents acquire critical competencies needed for operating a computer, and more importantly, for publishing parent and child produced articles in a capstone product for each cycle. This capstone product was either a desk-top "revista" or magazine-like publication or else a 2-4 page "informe" or newsletter. Following this fixed plan we were able to help parents and children develop a clear understanding of what the goals of a cycle were and what a final publication product might look like.

On the other hand, part of what is meant by reflexivity and collaboration is to allow a space for alternate paths once the cycle is underway, and to allow for the feedback of parents, children and team members in the planning and production of each cycle. Typically, one or two planning meetings per week per ten-week cycle were necessary, both to develop strategies for the implementation of each meeting's activities, and to allow for a back-up plan in case of contingencies. We also found it helpful to engage in a systematic overview of who was and was not attending each cycle, and what the relevant family circumstances were.

Frequently, parents sincerely planned to attend and were unable to do so, either because of family emergencies or, in some cases, because of circumstances in the community (political or social) that interfered with a given week's activities. It was often the case that, despite planning, the reality of the attendance on a given day was such that plans had to be altered once the parents were physically in the room.

Prior to each session, a plan was drawn up for the session at hand in accordance with what had transpired during the previous session and what the current goals were. As deemed necessary, discussion and contact among the research team members prior to the session at hand helped to focus and refine the activities for the session. As our project stabilized, three crucial components of session-construction were built into the design of each session. First, whole-group presentation, often involving the use of overheads or large screen computers, helped to set the focus and get the parents and children thinking about what they would accomplish during the evening's meeting. Then the parents and children were given a small goal for that particular meeting: a sample goal might be to find two Internet sites on the topic that one has chosen to research for this cycle. (For example, for the Fall 2000 cycle, we found Internet sites that had to do with the relevant cities/states in Mexico became especially important. Search engines such as "Yahoo en Español" were employed to find the respective sites.) All possible efforts, including time extensions insofar as this was compatible with room use, were made to see to it that each parent/child combination met the goal for the evening in question. Finally, each evening session ended with a closing whole-group meeting--in many instances, this proved to be one of the most valuable parts of the session. Parents and children were able to compare and contrast levels of accomplishment and what they found. These exchanges of information helped build the notion of a learning community. Especially for such encapsulated mini-projects as Internet research, having the parents share tips with each other about the websites that they have found was indeed an extremely fructifying source of information.

Teachers' participation in the design and implementation of project sessions was very important given our goal of familiarizing parents with learning activities encountered by children at school. This was especially the case during the last three years of the project. During this period, two of the teaching staff of La Patera Elementary School became very closely involved with our project. These teachers included one sixth-grade and one very experienced kindergarten/first-grade teacher, with many years at the school, who assisted our UCSB research team in running each individual session in the school computer room. The input of the teachers was invaluable, since they not only knew the room and software extremely well, but were able to help the research team devise projects for parent/child participation that were demonstrably related to activities undertaken by the students during the school year. An additional strength of having the teachers participate in the evening meetings was that--particularly with the sixth-grade teacher--it was frequently the case that the children attending with their parents were either present or former students of the teacher, This prior relationship aided in the development of strong bonds among the participants with respect to session/classroom experiences. The teachers also assisted in the initial presentation of the material at a given session, particularly where the whole-group presentation were concerned. Parents frequently commented favorably on the attendance of the teachers, many of whom are personally known to them from their children's experience at La Patera Elementary School.

Another finding relevant to research Goal 2 concerned a statistical evaluation study of parents' learning of computer skills utilizing pre-post assessment questionnaires regarding knowledge of computer skills (The questions are shown in Appendix A.) During 1998-99 we administered pre- and post-assessments for over the two project cycles for the year. We administered the pre-assessment orally. However, for the post-assessment for each of these cycles, we had parents 'work through' the assessment questions while seated at a computer with their children recording parents' use of the equipment. This performance assessment allowed parents to actually display their ability at the computer, rather than just have them affirm knowledge or familiarity in response to a purely oral questionnaire. We were able to collect completed pre- and post-assessments for 18 of the parent participants. These assessment areas included:

• computer awareness (ten questions),

• computer basics (twelve questions),

• basic word processing skills (five questions), and

• multi-media and telecommunications familiarity (ten questions.)

Appendix A summarizes results of the pre- and post-assessments for each assessment question according to assessment area, for the start of year and end of year. The percent of respondents indicating familiarity with each question in each area on pre- and post-assessments is also summarized. Matched pairs t-tests comparing the pre- and post-assessment scores of the 18 parents based on mean scores over questions in each assessment were conducted. The results indicated that the 18 parents showed statistically significant gains (p<.05) in every area of assessment over their course of participation in the project. Gains were evident for each question in each of the four areas assessed–save for two mentioned below, suggesting a comprehensive improvement in skills as a result of participating in the project. Gains were most prominent and of the largest magnitude with regard to 3 questions probing knowledge of the Internet in the question area of multi-media and telecommunications familiarity. Interestingly, parents showed no gain in knowledge in this area with regard to questions probing knowledge of how to download files from the Internet and how to use bookmarks to store web page addresses. This lack of improvement suggests that the assessment were working as intended and yielded valid information as parents in the 1998-99 cycle were not given the opportunity to learn these skills during the cycle.

The difference in pre- and post-question means was highly significant when questions were collapsed over all areas, as would be expected given the results for each separate question area. Over the pre- and post-assessment, parents went from averaging a mean of 15 questions answered affirmatively out of 37 total questions, to an average of 27 questions answered affirmatively by demonstrating a skill on the post-assessment. In terms of proportional gains, parents on the pre-assessment showed an average knowledge of 32% of the computer literacy skills assessed by questions. By the post-assessment this jumped to an average of 73% knowledge of the skills reflected in questions. These results support the hypothesis that exposure to project activities helped parents acquire computer literacy skills.

As mentioned in the methods section, children were not tested with pre- and post-assessment questionnaires. Instead, qualitative studies of parents' and children's interaction and joint accomplishments in learning and publishing activities were constructed.

The separate project product titled Strategies Guide for Implementing Immigrant Family Computer Learning Projects (Durán, et. al, draft 2001) summarizes our advice to others contemplating the implementation of a similar project. The Strategies Guide is just that. It consists of systematic reflections on our part regarding the issues and challenges faced in implementing our project as an action research project that others might encounter in establishing strategies for implementing their own projects of a similar nature.

The Strategies Guide is divided into nine sections, which discuss community collaboration, recruitment of participants, logistics and cultural sensitivity, self-assessment of project staff's computer expertise, and four other practical challenges in implementing a project.

Concerning community collaboration, three focal issues emerged:

• Location of project site

• Contact with the community for the establishment of the site

• Obtaining access to optional sites

A computer-oriented project designed to be responsive to community needs should and, in an ideal situation, should be located in a computer room at a school or community facility which is easily accessible to community members.

Recruitment and retention of parents/families turned out to be perhaps the most challenging issue in the implementation of our project. In addition as our Strategies Guide discusses there were cultural issues we needed to attend to. We were able to discern four separate areas related to the notions of recruitment and retention to which we frequently, as researchers, had to turn our attention:

• Establishment of cultural ambiance including use of L1 and L2

• Assistance with child care

• Sustaining commitment from parents/families

• Dealing with changes in school, university and community schedules and maintaining flexibility

We devised a multi-part strategy for promoting commitments and working with the parents to ensure their regular attendance at the sessions. This included:

• Ensuring the program was structured with manageable cycles of activity and key events, based at least partly on the feedback of parents and project goals

• A verbal commitment from families to attend a maximum number of sessions during the first session. It was explained that, because the sessions involved a commitment to reach learning goals and to a research project, a serious level of participation and attendance was beneficial to all involved

•With the help of the research team, providing participants transportation occasionally if it seemed that transportation was the main obstacle to a family's attendance

• Regular reminder phone calls were made to the parents before each session (in some cases, parents were given two reminder phone calls before a session)

Inevitably, even with all of the foregoing measures, there were sessions with as few as three or four parents attending, out of anywhere from seven to ten who had originally made a commitment.

For those evenings, we found that we frequently had to have "fall-back" plans available. On such occasions we might depart from the agenda for the evening in question, and invite the parents to do independent research on the Internet on their chosen topic of investigation, or perhaps suggest that they work with their children on homework assignments or to explore learning software for improving basic typing skills and/or English language games. There were moments when these activities overlapped, for example the time when a young student had been assigned to do work on the topic of "Galaxies" for a science project, and it turned out independent research on the Internet was indeed very helpful.

Thus the research team quickly learned that maintaining a flexible approach was very important, especially since it is impossible to foresee, even given the above mentioned measures, times when attendance might be lower than expected.

Another important issue guiding development of strategies in implementing our project involved assessing the university research team's knowledge of technology. Many of our researchers had enough previous experience with computers to help others (particularly those who had no previous experience), but our researchers were themselves, as is to be expected, at various levels of expertise with respect to computers and software. Thus we found that, prior to the beginning of each cycle, and particularly when new researchers were coming on board, it was helpful to incorporate into the planning meetings an overview of what each researcher knew. This was especially crucial with regard to the types of specialized word processing software that turned out to be extremely important to the functioning of our project

Another area covered in our Strategies Guide concerns paying adequate attention to specific goals for project cycles and for individual sessions making up a cycle. As we progressed in our work we became increasingly aware of the necessity of setting clear goals both for each cycle (in our case, a cycle comprising ten sessions) and for each individual session–all the meanwhile being open to parents' and children's own interests and goals. As we progressed, we found that setting goals was no simple task--this typically took several meetings of the staff (researchers, participating teachers, and occasionally a school administrator) before the beginning of each cycle, and sometimes necessitated "ad hoc" meetings of staff during the cycle itself, above and beyond the regularly scheduled staff meetings.

We found that a desktop-published item was a worthy goal for the completion of a cycle--it provided the parents with a focus, and helped staff indicate, in concrete terms, that work had been accomplished. Working with the parents and children to elect a theme for the desktop publishing turned out to be one of the most rewarding parts of the research. By keeping the goals modest–one desktop publishable written text from each parent/child combination per cycle--and sufficiently general (a large topic such as "Legends"), we were able to project goals as achievable for participants. Furthermore, this strategy maximized parents' and children's ownership of their activity in that they could exercise creativity and preference in determining the contents of their publications.

We also found, as indicated earlier here, that it is necessary to state the multiple goals (such as parents' learning, assisting children and opportunity to access technology, as well as the research agenda) clearly at the outset to the parents as a group (preferably more than once). If and when questions arise, it may be necessary to reaffirm that the project cannot be left completely open-ended as it is a project with learning goals for family members and a research project that the researchers themselves are accountable for meeting certain goals. Inevitably, sessions and cycles of activity must be revised as they are occurring.

The Strategies Guide report goes on to discuss lessons learned in implementing a quantitative assessment of parents' computer skill acquisition used for partial evaluation purposes. Our researchers employed a pre- and post-evaluation instrument, designed by the researchers with an easily comprehensible question and answer component, which was administered to parents upon entering the project and upon completion of a cycle of activity. Statistical analyses were run on the results obtained from the instrument at the end of each cycle. At a later point, in order to control for parents providing complying responses, we devised a post-evaluation that involved an actual hands-on demonstration--in other words, parents were required to display their knowledge by performing the operation of a certain computer-related skill, and as such demonstrate the skill in front of a researcher in order for an affirmative answer to be counted. Again, we observed that some parents may exhibit initial confusion about why such an assessment instrument is necessary. A straightforward explanation that emphasizes the goals the researchers attempt to accomplish with their project (as opposed to the individual learning) may be desirable.

Another recurring practical problem in developing strategies for working with the parents and children was trying to organize an appropriate response to feedback. It frequently happened that feedback on what we were doing with the parents would tend to push the cycle, as a whole, in a direction substantially different from the direction originally envisaged. Additionally, despite explanation, some parents became confused by the need to accomplish set goals within the project, and felt that the computer lab should be open as a "free time" period for parents and children to explore the Internet and word processing without having to do any specific work or produce any item or set of items. In an effort to address this concern, some of the research team and the school staff agreed to open the lab an additional half hour ahead of the scheduled start time in order to afford parents and children who so desired extra time for independent work. This opportunity was taken up by several participants who would arrive early to explore the Internet, write correspondence or advance homework projects. Over a period of time, the research team found that listening attentively to feedback, taking the appropriate action and then providing sustained explanation, where elicited, was the best approach.

Channeling feedback into productive ideas is no easy process. Some feedback is genuinely helpful--for instance, many parents have given researchers specific suggestions concerning implementation of the project and how they consider Internet use or certain instructional areas and assistance should proceed. Other feedback may simply reflect individual states of mind and opinions on participation on particular days. Researchers should make every effort to be responsive to all concerns while still realizing that the stated project goals must be maintained. Over the course of cycles the team developed a variety of visual support tools and written artifacts such as handouts, overheads, notebooks and the modeling of various tasks which were designed to enhance the levels of parents' and children's participation. In many cases, some of the most exciting learning has taken place when participants have questioned researchers about these tools employed.

The remainder of the Strategies Guide goes on to discuss our evolution of dissemination strategies more generally speaking. These included devising ways to share families articles in desktop publications in alternative formats and also ways in which the research team evolved its own presentation and research article development. Representative dissemination of the latter are:

• Durán, R. P., Durán, J., Ramirez, R., & Perry Romero, D. (Draft 8/27/01); Strategies Guide for Implementing Immigrant Family Computer Learning Projects.

• Durán, R. P., Durán, J., Perry-Romero, D., and Sanchez, E. (2001); "Latino immigrant parents and children learning and publishing together in an after school setting"; Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk, 6 (1-2), 95-113.

• Durán, R. P., Perry-Romero, D., Ramirez, P., Ramirez, R. and Tomlinson, H. (February 2001); "Immigrant Parent's Projection of Self-Identity through Writings in an After School Computer Learning Community"; paper presented at the NTCE Midwinter Research Conference, U.C. Berkeley.

Durán, R. P. (April 2000); "Cultural Projection in a Community-Based Technology Setting for Immigrant Parents and Children"; American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans.

The Strategies Guide concludes with a reassertion of its constraints. Inevitably, projects with a community base are works-in-progress. Each team must find what suits their needs, explore their local resources and expertise for project facets, and beyond this develop their own sets of priorities with input from participants. Our observations are designed to inform others of our experience and as such serve only as suggestions, possible ways in which to smooth the path for instantiation of future projects yet to come. Inevitably each project will carve its own course, learning from its own experience while also informing others.

We were also influenced considerably toward moving in this direction by external review of our project that included prominent investigators in cognitive anthropology (Evelyn Jacob) and interactional sociolinguistics (Fred Erickson). We were advised that close analyses of interaction among parents and children in computer learning sessions provided a unique opportunity to understand how sociocultural theory could be developed so as to account for the development of computer-related literacy competencies among immigrant families and children. Our move towards this direction for research was buttressed by previous experience in discourse analysis research as applied to cognitive studies, and graduate students ongoing training in discourse analysis and conversation analysis methodologies.

One case study we conducted examined the discourse practices and the development of a text by an adult using a computer for the first time. In the creation of the text, we examined how both the physical computer room context and artifacts, and sociocultural setting were related to the interactions that took place in the writing of the text and its content. We analyzed how the participants as writers generated their agency and identity as writers as they wrote it bit by bit. As the parents and children wrote together, they engaged in focused problem solving about language content (word selection for intended meaning) and organization (how ideas were introduced and organized through language), and language structural form (such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation) as mediated by the computer and its editing capacities. In the particular case study in question, we tracked how a parent chose to focus her attention on punctuation, despite having been encouraged to revise areas of content. We concluded that parents and children who are engaging in joint writing on the computer are gradually developing expertise regarding desktop publishing itself as a complex genre of activity. That is to say, parents and children began to show evidence that they knew what desktop publishing was as a form of replicable activity type that was part of their ongoing repertoire for communication via a computer.

A second case study drew on Wertsch's (1998) idea of mediated action. The study investigated how the UCSB facilitators served as "animate" tools that helped the participants to accomplish a writing task on a computer. Thus, the example is taken from a parent who was a new participant in this project. The analysis demonstrates that literacy skills or how one learns are not a product of education or knowledge but of mediated action between the staff and the family members, the parents and children, and between the computer and the family members. The analyses further examined the assisted performance of this parent and her development of agency within her zone of proximal development for the writing tasks at hand. From a cognitive perspective this analysis illustrated how people can learn based on mediated tools, and furthermore, how these mediated tools are based on human action, and how human action is situated in cultural, historical, and institutional settings.

One finding taken from this case study was the idea that development often occurs through the use of a cultural tool, even before an agent fully understands what this cultural tool is or how it works. The parent in question had never used a computer before and conceptually had no idea of what a computer could do. However, this did not prevent this parent from using a computer and accomplishing the task of writing a text on the computer. Hence, such an interpretation contrasts with the standard assumption that an agent must understand what work s/he is doing before s/he can perform an action. Furthermore, this developmental dynamic evolves when a learner arrives at a level of consciousness and control of a form of mediated action as a result of, and hence only after, having carried out that action for some time (Wertsch, 1998, p.133). Thus, until this mother understood internally what it is that the computer could do for her, the UCSB facilitator acted as a mediated tool for her, thus allowing her to accomplish her task of writing a text on a computer.

A third ethnographic case study focused on a detailed analysis of a fathers and sons non-verbal interaction as they worked together in the production of a written text using the computer. The study examined the pragmatic and social aspects of their non-verbal communication and how meaning and task orientation was related to significant shifts in their physical interpersonal distance and posture over activities and events. The postural and proxemic configurations were viewed as culturally recognized and conventionalized signals or contextualization cues, marking and inscribing boundaries among connected but separable actions (Gumperz, 1981; and Goodwin and Goodwin, forthcoming). The analyses of the study suggest ways learning interaction is constituted by both content and form of interaction similar to a "consequential progression" account of learning activity (Putney et. al.1998). In other words, when people interact in joint learning activities with each other, they are not only acquiring knowledge of what to learn but also knowledge of how to learn by means of strategic design of their interactions.

The data of the case study in question showed how a fourth grade boy communicates with his father while they engage in their text production. The opportunities for communicative exchanges serving different purposes are important elements to consider when we think further about the implications of affording parents, adults and children spaces for these types of interaction as repeated activity over meeting sessions. Examples of joint mediated activity were presented and served to illustrate the co-constructed nature of mind as action (Wertsch, 1998).

The data provided an insight into the types of participation structures that are operating in interaction among project participants as well as providing for a re-thinking of traditional stereotyped notions about gendered stereotypes about adult-child interaction (e.g. adult males don't invent and write stories with their male children). We saw, in contrast, how closely both father and son negotiated through actions and physical alignment their strategies for joint writing. Structures and interactions that frequently called for alternating the roles of expert and novice were evident and allowed for each participant to explore a range of dimensions of their relationship relevant to literacy and literate practices.

We also noted that Latino parents, mothers and fathers, have much to offer their children even though they may not always be highly familiar with schooled-literacy practices. By breaking stereotypes of expected or defined behavior within and beyond the classroom, we can gain a fresh take on what collaboration means and how computer technology enables learning and connections to children's schooling.

More recently, case studies have centered on on-going micro analytic research coupled with an ethnographic perspective to explore in depth the practices and interactional features of collaborative text production at the project site in both the moment to moment and across time. While typically conversation analysis as a methodology focuses on the sequential environment of talk, more recent work is now addressing questions concerning the larger social-structural context in which interactions occur (Wilson, 1991). By focusing on the turns at talk or concrete utterances as they occur in collaborative text production, it is possible to consider how literate actions are accomplished between children and parents and recognized as such by them (1). Of import here is the idea that literacy is not some abstract phenomena out there, to be apprehended by people, but rather that it is (1).

Although CA does not traditionally regard context beyond the sequential organization of talk increasingly work is addressing the reflexive relationship between talk and particular interactional settings. (See Boden & Zimmernan, 1991 for further readings) produced and constructed in and through the work and talk of people engaged together with and in the production of written texts. With this in mind such questions are asked as: How do participants orient to each other and each other's talk in literate events? How do participants orient to the on going text in production? How does the written text function as a resource for subsequent interactions in both the talk and with the text? By studying literacy events in this way it is possible to achieve an emic account of these interactions. In other words, to understand the literacy events not through researcher's labels but as member's phenomena and the ways in which participants orient to text and each other.

Thus far, preliminary findings indicate how participants working in Spanish and on occasions in English show a clear orientation not only to their language use and talk-in-interaction, but also to the on-going activity and the available visible text. Participants display a range of cultural and linguistic resources, which they employ and draw upon in the elaboration of their written texts. Participants display their knowledge of procedures and methods ranging from planning a text, researching information at the library, using the computer to explore the Internet and producing a text in a word processing program, to bringing to bear specific linguistic knowledge in the moment to moment creation of written text including reference to the orthographic properties of the written language and a sensitivity to play on words. Initial findings strongly suggest a dialogic relation between both children and parents' text and talk, one in which the organizational features of the interactions that occur in collaborative literacy events, like those occurring at the Parents, Children and Computers Project, appear as endogenous to these activities.

It appears then that social structural contexts, such as particular literacy events, are reflexively tied to the constitutive elements of the speech exchange systems, which bring them into being. Thus, while collaboratively written texts are shaped by participant's talk-in- interaction which compose the recognizable literacy events, these interactions are also shaped by the text.

What we find is that adults and youngsters alike orient not only to each other, to their language and their interactions, but also to the available written text in the environment. The written text becomes instrumental to accomplishing the tasks and to the organization of interaction. By locating literacy in the moment-to-moment interactions and as emerging over time we can further appreciate the "dialogics" of written text and talk and the contexts within which they emerge.

These are important considerations for the implementation of projects working with minority language groups and literacy. The theoretical and practical implications for literacy learning and literate practices are far reaching. Amongst the most salient is the need that texts be considered as socially situated and emerging between participants. Furthermore, that literate activities allow for and afford participants opportunities to engage in the type of events and text production which employ a range of genres and voices from the school and from the home, from parent and children, from a range of literate practices that are an inherent feature of written and spoken texts.

In this regard, one important research issue we face in our work is an account of how this learning community exercises and develops different forms of literacy practices and competencies among the participants. Because we have adopted a broad definition of the term "literacy" and because we use it to refer to the general semiotic capacity of humans to "write" as well as to "read" the world in terms of language practices and actions we have seen the "reading" and 'writing" involving print and texts as just two forms of literacy. Thus for us, parents learning to operate and use a computer as an instrument for publishing constitute another form of literacy. At one level our research involves the use of ethnographic methods to describe the kinds of literate practices engaged in by parents and children in order to understand their character and nature. Going beyond a summary account of these practices and their outcomes we illustrate how the actions of the participants support their exercise of agency as learners and communicators of knowledge based on a content analysis of sample texts that have been produced on a computer and have been subsequently published in a community newsletter. Similarly, an account of these practices and their outcomes has attempted to investigate how artifacts produced by the participants' supports their acquisition of agency as learners and communicators of knowledge mediated by computer use. For these purpose we draw on Kozulin (1998) notion of "authoring of self" adapted from Bakhtin. From this perspective "human thoughts, acts, and intentions can be viewed as authoring, and the emerging self can be viewed as an artifact analogous to the author of a literary work" (Kozulin, 1993; Bakhtin, 1990). From our vantage we see spoken and written communications as means for the projection of self and its worldviews. Hence, we see the actions and interactions of participants in our project as a continuous process of self-authoring conducted in joint collaborative with others in this learning community. The fact that our parents and children are producing texts for publication adds a "double voicedness" and recursiveness to this publication of self. In effect, participants publish themselves publishing texts on the computer. Hence the following analysis taken from a cycle of activity from the 2000-2001 academic school year looked at families who were asked to produce a text for a newsletter that would then be disseminated to the school community. This analysis illustrates how families published not only their texts for the newsletter but also initiated a set of interactions were families published themselves in the act of publishing their texts. Thus, each author is a multivocal agent producing texts about self on a computer in social collaboration with other project participants. Beyond the immediate audience of the local participants, the texts of parents and children become texts that address an imagined audience of community members who might share similar cultural and linguistic resources and ways of communicating.

Hence, the following questions guided the analysis of this case study: 1) What awareness did parents show about their intended audiences as marked in the content of their text (what language and cultural perspectives are prevalent in the text?)? 2) What themes and organization of themes occur in texts produced by parents and how do they project the lives and worldviews of the authors and their families? 3) What do the texts of parents reveal about their knowledge of schooled literacy and oral communicative practices? In reading and analyzing the sampled texts from this cycle of activity we found that the parents exhibited a definite awareness of an imaginary audience within the production of their text. This was done in various ways. One of the texts that we sampled was taken from a participant who had been in the program for four cycles.

This author addressed the reader directly throughout his text. Similarly, he addressed specifically in his writing the Latino community; a targeted community and audience had been selected. This audience became part of his projection as he included himself as part of this community by using an inclusive we throughout his text. Furthermore, throughout the text a reader response was encouraged through the use of questions and affirmations. In observing the different texts of the parents for this cycle of activity one of the parents who had been with us for only one cycle seemed to capture many of the reoccurring themes that other parents had mentioned in their own writing. Investigators in the sociocultural tradition such as Rogoff, Matusov, and White (1996) call attention to ways in which "learning communities" can bring together participants from school and community to create unique opportunities for exploring learning and its relation to joint activities among participants. In this program as participants' bridge multiple worlds based on school, community, and family experiences parents and children carry out informal learning and knowledge exploration about cultural values and themes of importance to them.

This one sample text showed that in many of the parents writing a concern for their children's education became a motivational factor to learn how to use a computer. Their involvement in their child's education was in hopes in obtaining a better future for the family. These themes were organized around this participant's viewpoint. Another reoccurring theme was how parents organized their text around current and near events. This particular parent mentioned how technology is something that parents should know as well as their children. Similarly, this participant mentioned her belief in reading and writing as a tool that needs to be developed as part of the family's education. Lastly, this participants' text was organized around temporal relations between past and present events. In other words, there was a cultural awareness of parents in this community of readers as immigrant parents who are searching for a better future in this host country.

In trying to analyze the texts of the participants we became aware of how the texts became one way in which parents revealed to their audience their knowledge about or of schooled literacies as well as the different communicative practices that they employed in their text production. In reading the world of education parents voicedmactivities among participants. In this program as participants' bridge multiple worlds based on school, community, and family experiences parents and children carry out informal learning and knowledge exploration about cultural values and themes of importance to them.

Similarly, the importance and maintenance of the native language became an issue that parents voiced as important in their particular context. Similarly, in reading the parents texts, the reader can see that there is a vocalization of needs and hopes that are held within the community for a better future through the attainment of their child's education since they are the future of tomorrow. To fulfill this goal, parents were aware that the home was also a learning environment that needed to be fostered and developed. Hence, many parents voiced how they could incorporate the different schooled literacies that they knew about in their home and this was in many cases shared with their intended audience through their texts. Lastly, parents became aware and voiced in their texts how children were also a resource for them to learn new things as well as understanding that parents also made a difference in their child's education. Hence, an examination of the practices of parents and the contexts of their texts reveals ways in which their literacy problem solving and writing becomes an assertion of their social and communicative identity.

Implementation of the project created an alternative community-based organization interfacing between a university research and development team, school personnel, community members, and families. An approach to family literacy that involved specific setting of learning and literacy goals, and that allowed parents and children choice and creativity in the contents of products produced on the computer was effective. The involvement of teachers and community role models as well as the promotion of Spanish language and the connection to the local university (graduate students and professor involved) served as a visible link to their children's possible/future education.

Immigrant Latino parents with limited or no computer experience showed themselves as adept learners of computer literacy. Parents were quick to acquire elementary computer skills despite wide variation in their schooling attainment and levels of schooled literacy. It was possible to design and implement pre-post questionnaire measures of parents' learning of elementary computer skills and to show statistically significant gains in parents' skills associated with participation in the project.

Parents and children produced complex written products on computers similar to school literacy tasks encountered by children that required exercise of important computer and technology skills, and an articulated understanding of audience, genre, and design of texts. Changes in proficiency in completing more complex learning and writing tasks by parents and children were not assessed by quantitative methods. Qualitative studies of parents' and children's interaction and project sessions employing ethnography and discourse analyses yielded rich evidence regarding how participants carried out learning and literacy activities. The research showed that the project's effectiveness was enhanced especially by being able to draw out cultural and experiential background knowledge of parents and children as a resource in the negotiation of texts.

Our findings derive support from sociocultural theory and highlight the effectiveness of developing a culturally sensitive program. By working with participants and building on their own experiences in situated meaningful activities, we are able to promote not only awareness of the school community in which their children are immersed but also to facilitate technology based literacy through the computer mediated writing activities that they engage in. Parent and child involvement provides a natural arena for joint mediated activity and scaffolding of different learning experiences that draw on diverse literacy practices.

The involvement of teachers and community role models as well as the promotion of Spanish language and the connection to the local university (graduate students and professor involved) can serve as a visible link to their children's possible/future education. Our experiences in implementing the Parents, Children, and Computers Project as a family literacy project brought to light many challenges as highlighted in our Strategies Guide for Implementing Immigrant Family Computer Learning Projects. From our experiential perspective and theoretical base, it is not wise to recommend that others literally copy the design of our project. Each project must be made sensitive to local community resources and needs. We believe, nonetheless, that our Strategies Guide is an excellent resource for groups wanting to start similar projects. The CREDE Center principles guiding effective teaching and learning also provide an excellent resource for new projects. Our findings and theoretical base are consistent with these principles. It is very important that implementers of new projects such as ours take into account the combined role of research and development in starting and modifying a project as an experience base develops. As Tharp and Gallimore (1998) argue and demonstrate, careful analysis of the distribution of expertise and the nature of collaboration and involvement among project participants is essential as a project transforms itself into an ongoing learning community.

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