We’ve added a new feature to Hschooler.net - the ability to create photo albums and upload photos to share with your friends!

While this is an exciting new feature that we expect to be very popular, we also realize that photos are a sensitive type of content. Parents are rightfully concerned about both whether their kids are uploading unsafe pictures (e.g. pictures that expose too much personal information or pictures that are embarrassing to the kids or their friends) and whether their kids are viewing pictures with inappropriate content. Given that our focus at Hschooler is creating a fun and safe environment that recognizes the God-given authority of parents, before introducing Photos, we knew we had to build in safeguards for this feature.

To address the first concern (kids uploading pictures), Photos is a feature that must be enabled by parents. Until it is enabled, a user can’t upload any photos. That means that the Photos feature is only available to members that have upgraded to a Family account. We believe that’s the right decision for creating a safe environment. By the way, as with all tools in Hschooler, parents can set boundaries for how broadly their family members can share Photos. A parent might decide that a younger child should only share photos with family members until she can demonstrate that she’s using good discretion.

To address the second concern (what kids can see), parents can also set boundaries for whose photos each family member can see. For example, a parent might set the boundary so that a student can see photos from “trusted friends” but not “all friends”. (By the way, if you ever see any inappropriate content in Hschooler, please click the “Report this” link in the top left corner of most windows in Hschooler.net.)

Every member that has Photos enabled gets 10MB of free storage for photos. We encourage members to set their digital camera to take lower resolution photos, or use a photo editing tool (like Photoshop or Paint.net) to reduce the resolution so that they can store dozens of photos in that 10MB. Once the first 10MB are filled with photos, additional storage can be purchased with Tuits - the virtual currency within Hschooler.net.

Check out the video tutorial for Enabling and Managing Photos and the video tutorial for using Photos.