TripAid is designed specifically for school trips by two teachers with over 30 years combined experience. There are other apps for messaging and location sharing,
1) The EVC is in control
TripAid groups or “trips” are created by the School’s Educational Visits Co-ordinator. They determine the start and end time of the trip and are notified, whenever a teacher needs to change these during a trip. This ensures that the EVC is in complete control of all communication between the teachers and students to ensure the safeguarding and privacy of every user is maintained after the school trip has ended.
2) Students can’t see each other
Designed to ensure that students are only sharing location and communicating with teachers, Students cannot see each other on the map, or see any messages that other students send. This ensures that the students are safe, and that their data is only shared with their Loco Parentis whilst on the trip. This is an important step as a students’ live location is an essential piece of information, (whilst on a ski slope for example), but must be shared with great care.
3) Trip is locked to avoid unwanted extra users
When organising a trip and sending information home, it is impossible to ensure that login codes are only shared with users on the trip. TripAid has been developed to ensure that only the correct users can access the trip. Before a teacher begins the trip, they can check the register of users who have logged on, deleting incorrect users if needed, and when correct, the teacher begins the trip. At this point the codes become invalid for new users, ensuring that if the code has been shared with someone not on the trip, they are unable to access the app. Teachers can add new students via the app if needed, using newly generated single use codes.
4) Trips automatically shut down
At the end time of the trip, it is essential for the privacy and safeguarding of teachers and students that the sharing of information ends. The teacher ends their responsibility of Loco Parentis and both the student and the teacher want their privacy returned. When a school coach returns from a long trip in the late hours, we can’t expect everyone to be thinking about updating their privacy settings. To this end, TripAid automatically shuts the trip and ejects all users from the trip at the time designated by the EVC. This ensures that schools are not reliant on users remembering to eject themselves. As no phone numbers, emails or any other contact information is shared, this ensures that teachers and students are no longer able to locate or communicate with one another after the trip ends.
