The Bavel Blocks Environment Is Safe
We provide a safe environment and protect the privacy of children. We comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA – https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-reform-proceedings/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule). We retain no information that personally identifies the student. And we do not share personal information with third parties. Projects are private to the student that created them and can only be viewed when a student is logged onto our site. We allow students to publish projects, but only if they join our site as a member which requires parental permission (see Bavel Membership below).
Logging into the Bavel site requires a Google ID. Google authentication provides an ID (which is simply a number) and we transform the Google ID to an internal ID to identify which projects belong to the student. When a student logs on, we create a session cookie that contains our internal ID. A session cookie is kept in the browser until the session is destroyed. Simply closing the browser destroys the session.
Bavel Blocks Membership
We encourage students to collaborate and share their projects and comments as members. As a Bavel member, students can publish their projects and contribute in our forums. When becoming a member, we ask for a name that will be displayed in forums and published projects. Our forums and published projects are public and can be viewed by anyone. We require verifiable parental permission for the student to become a Bavel member. The COPPA rules allows us to verify parents through an on-line payment system like PayPal or through a credit card charge. To verify parental permission, we charge a fee and ask for a parent’s email address to allow students to become Bavel members. Students may identify themselves either by posting in our forums or by presenting information in a published project. A parent can request that information associated with their child to be deleted by contacting us through the email and name registered with the member account. We also reserve the right to remove posts or projects we believe to be offensive or inappropriate.
We do not allow a student to upload files, but we do allow them to link to image and sound files that are publicly available on the internet. Cloud storage provided by vendors such as Google or Amazon provides options that allow you to make files private or public. If you want your child to be able to use their own artwork and sound files in Bavel projects, publicly accessible cloud storage is an option.