Rocky Mountain Tracking

By Greg Bartlett

Do you remember how you kept teasing your kids when they were little that you needed to keep them on a leash? Well, GPS technology has created personal tracking that will keep you up-to-date with their movements at any moment. There are a variety of options available for personal tracking and it can be used for a number of reasons.

GPS & Children

Trackmykids.com has created miniature GPS devices that can be attached to backpacks, belts, or coats to monitor your child’s whereabouts. If you want to know the path that they traveled to school, where they are at the current moment, or even whether they stayed within the boundaries that you gave them, this technology might work for you. This site is one of many that offers child tracking, allowing you to have a logon and password so that you are the only one who has access to that information.

GPS tracking is a technology that has been developed recently in science. Although there are many types of GPS tracking, the basics behind it are the same. There must be some sort of device that is connected the object in question. When the device is activated, it begins recording data or transmitting signals to satellites that are strategically located. These satellites reflect the signals to a central computer that records and analyzes the information. Technicians can then make this information available to the public as needed.

A recent event in news has caused a public outcry in regards to the extent that personal tracking has gone. Several schools across the USA have given their students new computers to assist them with schoolwork. The downside, as many have found out, is that the webcam on those computers has been taking pictures and videos of the students working at the computers, or even of other people that are in the room. While this may not sound bad, these cameras have caught some very compromising situations on tape and several school board officials have been questioned regarding the integrity of such a project.

Personal tracking may be the answer to maintaining the security and privacy of your children, but make sure that you consider all the side effects. These items are easily attained and you can even carry one on yourself so that others know your location in case of an emergency. Check out what GPS tracking can do for you.

By Greg Bartlett

The news seems full of reports of teen driving deaths, around 3,500 in 2008 alone, and many parents wonder how they can keep their own young drivers safe. Certainly, when teenagers are learning, the solution is easy. Parents can sit right next to their children and monitor their every move, telling them to slow down, stop at stoplights, and cautioning them against reckless driving. However, what do parents do once their children are fully trained and learn to drive by themselves?

Teen Drivers & GPS

Many families have started using vehicle tracking systems to solve this problem. These systems allow parents to see exactly where their child is and what their child is doing. If a teenager is going over 70 in a 45 zone, he may find his phone ringing with a lecture from his mom. If another teenager appears to be engaged in reckless driving and won’t answer her phone, parents can track where she is and find her. Although these situations may seem unnecessary and annoying, especially to the teenagers involved, many lives could be saved by using GPS tracking.

Guy Thompson of Lake Oswego, Oregon tracks his 16 year old driver, Maggie using a vehicle tracking device. At first, he admits, he checked on her regularly throughout the day, and Maggie confesses she didn’t like being on a leash. However, the pair says that after awhile, Thompson started checking only once a day, and she grew used to the vehicle tracking device, forgetting, at times, that it was even there. Of course, like any teenager, she wishes her parents didn’t use it in the first place, but she is willing to put up with the process and does acknowledge that it helped cultivate trust between her and her parents. Thompson, however, feels the device is fine. Although, he does add that it needs to be between parents and children.

Although many teenagers may feel these devices signify a lack of trust on their parents’ part, most parents view that miscommunication as a small price to pay for the safety and continued lives of their children. Granted, some children are trustworthy without GPS tracking. Still, many others need the accountability provided by such a device. Parents of teen drivers should seriously consider purchasing a vehicle tracking device, thus preventing their own children from being one of the next 3,500 deaths this year.

By Harriette Halepis

Source Acquired via San Antonio News — In January of 2010, certain schools within Bryan, Texas, began tracking truant students using GPS tracking devices. Due to a decree handed down by Justice of the Peace Tommy Munoz, those students who were considered truant were slapped with GPS bracelets and tracked throughout the daylight hours.

GPS Tracking & Truancy

Many were sceptical as to whether or not this GPS tracking system would work, but as the months passed the class attendance within those Bryan, Texas, schools began to rise. This prompted other schools throughout the Texas area to adopt similar methods. San Antonio is one area that quickly adopted the GPS tracking system, and (as the San Antonio News reports) it’s one system that is proving to be highly effective.

Districts within the San Antonio area were simply “…looking for a solution…” when they came across the Bryan, Texas, case. Shortly thereafter, “…they tracked down a pilot program that gave them 25 GPS units and 12 weeks to try them out….” The result has been astounding. For the first time in a long time “…the students have been going to school…”

Which students get to carry GPS bracelets with them at all times? Well, that’s up for the counts to decide. Those students who prove to be more truant than the rest will find a court ordered GPS sentence, while students who attend class daily will go without being tracked.

The students who are forced to carry the GPS tracking device with them must check-in with an authority figure at different points during the day, and lying about one’s whereabouts won’t work - different codes tell authorities where a student is at all times, so there’s no escaping the GPS system.

Texas is proving to be a flagship state as far as tracking truant students goes, but it’s only a matter of time before other states begin to adopt this way of keeping kids in class. Thus far, nothing is working better at keeping kids in school than the constant electronic watchdog that is the GPS device.

By Greg Bartlett

Teen drivers, the bane of every parent.  Most parents are or at least should be concerned when their teenager borrows the car for an evening out.  Car accidents are, after all, the leading cause of death for U.S. teenagers.  But what can parents do in order to permit their teens to still be free to do their activities while not endangering themselves or passengers?  After all, isn’t one of the benefits of your teen getting a driver’s license that the teenager no longer has to depend on you to drive him or her everywhere?

There are steps parents can take to help reduce the likelihood of accidents, such as driver’s ed, curfews so the teens don’t drive during dangerous times, and reminding the teens of safety issues.  The “little” things like wearing a seat belt or speeding can make a huge difference in a teen’s life.

But even despite your precautions, what happens if your son decides to take some of his friends out for pizza, and the peer pressure makes your son want to show off rather than follow your instructions?  Just a little bit of speeding, and your son and his friends might end up in the hospital, or even the morgue.  Or what if your daughter decides to sneak out after curfew?  How will you know to stop her until it’s too late?

Teenage Drivers & GPS

GPS tracking is one option parents can use to help ensure the safety of their teenage drivers.  When a car is equipped with a GPS tracking unit, the unit will monitor the car’s activities.  Parents can get a report of their teen’s driving activities so that they know how fast the teen has been driving or if the teen has been out after curfew.  While this won’t stop teens from unsafe driving, it can alert parents to problem areas that need to be addressed.  Better yet, some GPS tracking units will even alert the parent via a text message, email, or phone call the instant the car exceeds a certain speed or is driven during restricted hours, allowing you to stop the problematic behavior immediately and hopefully prevent an accident.

Driving is an important part of your teens’ lives, and of course you want to give them the freedom to drive themselves around - so long as they’re safe.  If you add GPS tracking to your other precautions, such as education and curfews, you can help ensure that your teens are not another accident statistic.

By Greg Bartlett

When it comes to truancy, there’s at least one town in Texas that’s taking matters into its own hands. High school students who deliberately miss class in Bryan, Texas will be given hand-held GPS trackers to encourage them to return to school. Brazos County Justice of the Peace Tommy Munoz says that this measure will show students that breaking laws—even small ones—has consequences. By implementing this “Attendance Improvement Management” (AIM, for short), Munoz hopes to deter kids from repeatedly ignoring truancy regulations, which can result in more severe punishments like mandatory ankle bracelet GPS trackers or even a trip to juvenile court.

GPS & Truancy

County judges often have a great deal of latitude in assigning punishments or behavior improvement programs to kids who commit lesser offences. The law allows a judge some flexibility to determine what may or may not encourage someone to get back on track. Many view GPS trackers as a simple preventative measure, and in the case of this town, the devices are small enough to be placed in a book bag alongside a cell phone. Munoz ruled out ankle bracelet GPS trackers since he didn’t want the program to seem like a humiliating, kiddie version of parole.

But for a problem such as truancy, technology can never be the full solution. Munoz also requires that repeat offenders attend counseling sessions with professionals who want to explain to the kids the benefits of staying in school. Parents will be involved in the program, providing their kids the GPS trackers in the morning and checking them in at night. Munoz understands that parental involvement is the most important factor. Previously he has addressed minor offenses by requiring students to attend a day of class along with a parent. The judge is known statewide for his creative problem solving.

Thankfully, Munoz’s use of GPS trackers is thoughtful and not draconian. Other states in previous years have attempted to pass laws requiring school-wide use of the devices. In the United Kingdom, a uniform company called Trutex has sold to some private schools uniforms that are already embedded with GPS trackers. In these—admittedly exclusive—academies every student is tracked at all times, regardless of his or her disciplinary record. By contrast, the students of Bryan County have much less supervision to worry about. With currently a 97% attendance rate, it looks like the system may be working.

By Harriette Halepis

As soon as the first GPS tracker hit the shelves parents began tracking their children. Some parents simply wanted peace of mind that a child would not be abducted walking home from school, while other parents used the devices as a means of “technological parenting.”

GPS & Children

While many people argue that tracking a child is an invasion of that child’s privacy, it should be noted that many children have been saved thanks to GPS trackers. When a child is tracked via GPS, police can locate that child following abduction. Contrastingly, children who are not equipped with GPS trackers have very little hope of being found.

Still, many people wonder if attaching a GPS tracker to a child is akin to spying on children. In one way, parents who use GPS trackers are spying on their children - but, is this such a bad thing? Children under the age of 18 are generally gullible, innocent, and entirely trusting, which is why it’s relatively easy for a kidnapper to coax a child into a vehicle or away from other children.

When parents are keeping a watchful eye on children, the likelihood that a kidnapper will be able to abduct a child is lowered. Of course, kidnapping is still possible, but parents can quickly pinpoint the exact location of a kidnapper with the help of a GPS.

Some will argue that a parent/child relationship should be built upon trust, but at what age? While parents may want teenagers to trust them, far too many teens have run away from home never to be seen from again. Would these teens have been returned to their parents if they were wearing GPS tracking devices at the time they decided to run away?

On the flip side, there’s no doubt that some overprotective parents may attempt to track a child’s every move out of sheer anxiety. Likewise, some parents may rely too heavily upon GPS trackers to monitor children without building a relationship with children. However, both of these scenarios are extreme, and, therefore, only apply to a select group of people.

Another question that has been raised frequently is whether or not children have any real privacy rights. After all, how can a parent expect to protect a child if they are unaware of a child’s actions? Children who are granted too much privacy often wind up in troublesome situations. In the end, there is no clear cut answer to the question: is tracking your children an invasion of privacy?

By Greg Bartlett

A couple summers ago, I interned with a local family court.  There were a number of juveniles who came through the court during my internship who were being charged with truancy.  A few times, their parents were brought into the system, too, because they were under a court order to ensure that their kids got to school and the kids still weren’t attending classes.  Sometimes the juveniles didn’t go to school because their parents didn’t bother to make them, but sometimes the kids would refuse to get up or would even get on the bus and then get off someplace else, making their parents’ efforts useless.

GPS & Truancy

For parents who are concerned about their children’s education attendance, or who could even be facing jail time if their children do not attend school, a new option may turn out to be especially helpful.  Some students in Texas who are also frequent visitors to truancy court have been testing GPS monitoring, which allows that the court to ensure that the students are attending classes as ordered.

The GPS monitoring devices, which are about the size of a cell phone, can track the juveniles’ location and allow the truancy court officials to determine whether or not the individuals attended classes as required.  If they drop out of the program or leave the devices at home, the juveniles can face jail time for contempt of a court order.  Apparently the threat is working, because the program is reporting a 98% attendance rate for students on the program, and a continued 97% attendance rate for those who finished.

GPS monitoring can be a help both to the student, encouraging him or her to attend classes and graduate, and to the parent, who no longer has to worry about trying to force a child to attend classes and to risk jail time if the child skips classes despite the parent’s efforts.  For family or truancy courts, a GPS device can help provide the answer by giving a case worker the ability to closely monitor a juvenile and to strongly encourage him or her to attend classes as ordered without having to follow the juvenile around each day.

During my internship, I saw many concerned and frustrated parents and social workers.  Without the ability to more closely monitor a juvenile and ensure school attendance, chronic truancy sometimes couldn’t be stopped.  GPS monitoring, however, provides the necessary supervision and is apparently helping truant students redirect their lives and start attending classes again.

By Harriette Halepis

Source acquired via The Eagle (Bryan, TX) Jan 20, 2010 — Since the first school was erected in Ancient Greece, kids have made it a point to skip class now and then. While most administrators give students a slap on the wrist for this type of truancy, Justice of the Peace Tommy Munoz has had enough of doling out small slaps.

GPS & Truancy

A recent announcement that Munoz would be equipping truant students with GPS trackers has had some parents outraged while others fully support the decree. As some parents have argued, the thought of monitoring students with GPS trackers tends to conjure up images of criminals.

Those opposed to Munoz’s ruling argue that since many criminals around the world have recently been given new GPS ankle bracelets to wear, putting truant students in the same category seems to be sending the wrong signal. Acknowledging these protests, Munoz made it very clear that the GPS trackers truant students would be given are not the same as those trackers that criminals currently wear.

Instead, the “truancy trackers” are approximately the size of an average cell phone. Further, instead of attaching these trackers to a student, students will be asked to carry the trackers with them. In addition to simply carrying a tracker, students will also be asked to check in with authorities five times per day.

What happens if a student forgets to check in or simply forgets a tracker at home? Well, Munoz isn’t playing around when it comes to truancy, and he’ll “…hold them in contempt and they’ll face juvenile detention.” Munoz believes that “…the school has rules and adults have laws,” which means that those teens carrying a truancy tracker better not forget to bring that tracker to school every day.

Teens that are forced to take part in Munoz’s experiment can’t simply drop out of school either - to do so would be in violation of a court order. In fact, Munoz has promised that he will make it his duty to find students who have dropped out and slap them with an arrest warrant.

As for the cost of the program, the funding for the program will come from the Justice of the Peace Technology Fund, and the price of putting together Munoz’s plan will be around $13,000. The aim of the program is to “…get one student out of 10 to graduate…” This may not seem like a lot, but in the town of Bryan, Texas, most students never see graduation day. Whether or not Munoz’s truancy tracker plan will work has yet to be seen, but it’s one way to stop students from skipping school for the time being.

By Greg Bartlett

You care about your kids and want to make sure they’re always safe. But now that they’re in their teens, they don’t exactly want you coming along everywhere they go. And they probably get tired of constant phone calls asking where they’re at and what they’re doing. What if you could know where they’re at all the time without having to follow them everywhere? What if you even got an alert every time they were speeding or could see when they entered a bad neighborhood?

Teen Drivers & GPS

GPS teen tracking has the power to tell you where your kids are all the time. Some parents have even installed the device in the trunk of their teen’s car without having to make an issue of it-the ultimate in non-invasive parenting. And as simple as that, you know where they go. Say goodbye to having to trying to figure out their every move. Your teen can say goodbye to the constant phone calls. You know what’s happening; your teens don’t feel like they’re being micro-managed.

GPS teen tracking has two really big benefits. One of them is safety. Is it really the best for your teen to be going out and absolutely no one knows where they are? With a simple device, you can always know where they are if the need should arise. One parent suspected that their teen might be involved in dangerous behaviors. She simply put a tracking device in his trunk and just like that, she could know what was happening with her son.

But the biggest benefit of GPS teen tracking is peace of mind. You could either wonder all the time and worry because you have no idea what is happening, or you could know. You could have the ability to check where your teen is at any time of the day or night. Surely, that has to be worth the cost of a tracking device!

There is one other interesting benefit that has only come to light more recently. A few months ago, a teenager used GPS data in court. According to a radar gun, he was accused of going almost 20 miles over the speed limit. But GPS data said he was going exactly 45 at the time of the citation. That’s a pretty good defense when you have good technology to back it up!

GPS teen tracking may be just what you’ve been needing to be a responsible parent without driving your teens crazy. Safety and your peace of mind might be as simple as a GPS tracking device.

By Greg Bartlett

As a parent, you know the joys of watching your child experience a myriad of firsts. The first step, the first solid food, the first word—all of these moments are indelibly inscribed in your memory as unforgettable cherished recollections. You know the heartbreak of watching your children experience rejection for the first time and the joy of seeing them succeed, and you wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything in the world. But what if those life altering moments were suddenly stolen from you?

GPS & Children

Kidnappings occur far more often in this country than most people realize and most are perpetrated by someone the child knows and trusts. That’s why parents should invest in a GPS tracking device to protect their children’s safety. You can’t be with your child every moment, but GPS tracking provides you with an extra set of eyes so that your child’s safety is never compromised.

Your GPS tracking device transmitter can be attached to your child’s backpack or clothing and will send a signal to your computer so that you can check on his or her whereabouts at any time. Depending on the model, you can view not only current location, but also a report of movement over time, speed, direction of travel, and number and length of stops made. All of this information can be invaluable to police in the event of a kidnapping.

Training your child to be cautious around strangers is always good strategy, but when your estranged spouse shows up at school and tells your child to get in the car, the child is likely to obey. That’s when your GPS tracking device can be of invaluable service. Many devices come with alert systems that will notify you if your child leaves a designated area. You can set up perimeters around your child’s school, your home, and other places that you frequent. If the GPS tracking device is taken outside those perimeters, you will receive an alert via email or text message, allowing you to immediately check your child’s location and take action if necessary.

No one likes to think about kidnappings, but if the worst happens, you’ll be glad you planned ahead. Nothing is more important than your child’s safety. The next time you smile at one of your child’s firsts, you can congratulate yourself on planning for his safety and your peace of mind by investing in a GPS tracking device.