New App Lets Jenks Parents Monitor Online Activity Of Their Schoolchildren

Jenks Public Schools is giving parents a new way to monitor their kids’ activity online.

They say a new app gives parents more control over their child’s online access.

The district gives each student a Chromebook in 7th grade that they can use as their textbook until they graduate.  A new app allows parents to control what websites their child sees at specific times.

Chromebooks are part of the school day every day for hundreds of students at Jenks Public Schools.

“Their Chromebook is their tool, is their academic tool,” said Dr. Nick Brown, the principal of Jenks Middle School.  “It would be like taking a student’s science book away from them.”

For the last several years, teachers and district leaders have been able to monitor each Chromebook.  Now, parents have access to that same information.

“Teaching students how to truly function in the digital world that they were born into,” said Brown.  “We also want to teach them responsibilities with those devices.”

Parents can download an app called “Securely.”  With the touch of a screen, they can see every website their student has gone to that day.

“If they know, let’s say there is a problem in their language arts class, then they can look and see during that time frame what was happening on that Chromebook – was the student actually focused in class?” said Brown.

The app even gives parents the opportunity to monitor what websites their students are on at specific times.

Brown says “parents can actually turn it off for a while when students are supposed to be working on homework and then turn it back on when students maybe have some free time and are able to use the Chromebook for personal uses.”

According to Brown, the new system allows parents to be proactive and help their kids use the Chromebook to get even more out of their education.

“It’s a great way for parents and teachers to kind of work together to monitor the students and help them stay on task,” he said.

The district says they already have specific websites that are blacklisted for students.  They say this new system is focused on weeding out distracting websites so that students can focus on their schoolwork.