If you are a parent who has questions about how to keep kids safe online, you might be interested in hearing about how Noble Academy uses Bark, a digital tool for monitoring children’s online activity, and how you could consider for at-home use as well. Noble Academy’s IT Manager, Michael Essex, explains how Bark works, and some of the factors parents might want to consider.
Bark is a tool for advanced content monitoring that adults can use to keep kids safe online. (Bark.us)
Gayle:
Today I’m joined by Noble Academy’s IT Manager, Michael Essex. Michael has been with Noble for about three years, after relocating from Oregon, where he served as Technology Director for a public school district for six years. Since this season we’re focusing on practical advice for parents, I’ll also mention that Michael is a dad himself, and he puts a lot of thought into how he and his wife can keep their children safe online, so he brings that perspective with him to his work protecting Noble students as well. This year, Michael installed a program called Bark for use here at Noble, and today we’ll talk about what it does, why it matters, and how you might consider it for your family as well.
Michael:
I don't know if you're familiar with Bark at all, but what it does is it monitors student emails, student chat, what they're saying in their documents, anything that they're doing online, it monitors that and it will let you know if there's any red flags that come up. It could be inappropriate things, bullying, cyberbullying, drug use, alcohol use, anything you want to put in there, it'll let you know and that'll give you a chance to ask them what's going on and see what's going on on their computer.
What's nice about Bark is that the kids don't have to feel like they're being monitored 24-7, because it's not doing that. It's not monitoring everything they're doing and reporting it. It's just monitoring to see keywords, things like that. And then they'll let you know if you need to get involved.
Gayle:
I know as an educator what Bark is and I know how we can use it as a school. Is it different for parents who might want to use a tool at home. for monitoring students' technology use?
Michael:
It works the same. It works pretty much similar to school use. The benefit about us being a school is that they make it free for us to use for the students at home. Parents will have to pay for it themselves. They do have a free trial
And I signed up for the parent trial. I don't think it was that expensive.
Gayle:
So you said that Bark is a tool that lets you know what your students are up to. If I'm a parent and my child is signed up with Bark, are they aware of it? What are they seeing as their user experience? And how do I need to talk to them before I potentially install bark for my child?
Michael:
They won't see anything on their end.
Once you install it, they're going to have to be signed on with a certain account, like a Google account. Chromebooks work very well for that. But you can tie that Google account into the Bark system. But the students themselves won't see it. I would let them know that, hey, we're just not spying on you. But at the same time, you want to make sure you're safe online with everything going on. And so just talking to them beforehand, letting them know that you're going to have this tool. And then, of course, if anything does happen, you would bring it up and they would know at that point.
Gayle:
If a parent is considering using this, what type of reporting should they anticipate?
Michael:
Well, you can fine tune that. So when I set it up for the school, there are about 15, 16 categories, So it does offer you a lot of different levels of three different levels, severe, all or none, and then each category has some more fine-tuning you can do.
Gayle:
So if a parent is worried, let's say they don't want their student who's studying history to get impeded when they're doing a research project on World War II because there might be reference to violence, will the student continue to be able to use it? and the notification goes to the parent, or will the student be blocked in any way that might frustrate them as they're doing academics?
Michael:
No, unless you set that up. Because like I said, they do have a web filtering option. So if you set up the web filtering option, of course, if you block certain categories, it might block them. But the way we have it set up here is it just lets us know. It doesn't block anything. It just lets us know what's happening.
Gayle:
Can you name any alternatives or competitors to Bark and how would you compare it? What would you replace? with Bark or what would you see as complementary to using Bark if somebody's interested in it?
Michael:
Well, I don't know of any direct competitors with them. I do know Google has a family link option that's free. I use that for my kids. That lets you set a timeline. I don't believe it lets you do like categories and block things like that. It doesn't monitor their email, but it'll let you know what websites they went to. how long they've been on the computer, what app they've been using the whole time.
And you could set, for each app, you can say, I only want you doing an hour of Roblox or an hour of YouTube. And then you could have it set up during the week for none. Weekends, they get a little bit more freedom, so they can, you know, watch maybe a couple hours on the weekend, whatever you want to set up.
Gayle:
And just on the privacy and security side, what if a parent is concerned about what Bark might know based on its monitoring of my family's technology?
Michael:
That's a good question, and they claim that they don't keep any of the records. I can't say it 100%, that's true. But what they don't, I mean, they claim that they don't keep records. So once you get a report, they might have that in the system for a certain amount of time, and then they're automatically deleted. And that's what they claim, I don't know. They also state they're not gonna sell any of your information, especially the student's information, so you don't have to worry about that. child's information getting sold to a third party, because you're paying for a premium service.
You might have to look out for that if you decide to go to a free version, other than Google. So maybe there's this free version. But when it's a free version, you're the product. And so they're going to sell your information. That's how they're going to make money. So just be aware of that.
And then finally, for people who are hearing us talk about how, as a school, Noble Academy uses Bark, can you just talk about our philosophy and what gives us the right to monitor students' emails? What are the policies in place that make it so that it is appropriate that we are using Bark as we monitor students' tech use on our network?
Michael:
Well, when it's on our network, they're at school, they're here to learn. I think it gives the organization or the school the ability to make sure it's a safe environment, to make sure there's nothing. I mean, there's lots of bad players out in the world,
Gayle:
So if I'm a parent and I'm curious about Bark, I'm not sure if I'm gonna do it, what are my steps? I imagine the first one is to go to the Bark website or app and check it out. And the second would be to discuss it with my family. Are those the first two steps?
Michael:
Yeah, I would definitely go to the website, take a look at it, do your research.
Maybe there's some other ones out there that will work better for you. I'm not here selling Bark, but it's a product that I think works really well. So try it out, give it a free trial, and see if you like it.
Gayle:
Where do you look for reviews? Do you, if you're considering Bark or an alternative, do you use Common Sense Media or a different review tool for families?
Michael:
Actually, AI, you can just do a search now in AI, and that gives you a lot of different links, a lot of different well-known resources.
Gayle:
I want to thank Michael Essex, Noble’s IT Manager, for all the work he does to help students at Noble use technology effectively and safely, and for his tips about Bark and other tools like it. I have put some of the information he shared in our show notes. If you have a topic you would like us to address on a future episode, please don’t hesitate to reach out.