This is quite simply to ensure that a teacher's registration is genuine and that the teacher works for the school in question. Teachers are given access to an area of our server (for your school) so we want to make sure we know who they are, and that we have spoken to their school switchboard.

Because identifying your school uniquely is an important part of the registration process, we purchased a database with the names of all UK primary schools. This enables us to give you the option of picking your school, rather than typing it in. This then avoids problems of the same school being entered several times with slightly different spellings or designations. We realised the importance of this when we found that there are 426 instances of ‘St. Mary’s Primary School’ in the UK!

Kidscapism is popular in schools (especially UK primary schools). You may find your child coming home and wanting to show you their work, or the work of their schoolmates. This is why the school they attend is very important. Your child, in identifying themselves with their school, then can get access to work in their own class, or that has been submitted by other children at that school. Additionally they might be able to see other work, if it has been approved (by a teacher or kidscapism) for more general web access.

We have invested significantly in the latest secure web hosting. Our servers are hosted with GreenGeeks - a US based environmentally friendly hosting company. The servers use both software and hardware firewalls (provided by Cisco) to protect our site from attacks by hackers or senders of elicit email.

If you are concerned about your name, or that of your children, being visible online, please do use a pseudonym (anything will do - although it needs to be something relevant to you or your child, and something you will remember!).

At registration, you will be prompted for an email address.

Feel free to use our general email - student@kidscapism.com - if you wish to ensure your child is not contacted through an external email address.

The approvals process described above is carried out by individuals (either registered teachers or Kidscapism staff) who have been fully checked by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). These are the police checks which is carried out for people who work with young people. We use the enhanced checks (as do schools for their teachers) which represent the highest level of check that can currently be obtained.

We do not have chat rooms or forums on this site, and there is no mechanism for children contacting each other or interacting live.

Teachers control any interaction between children - mostly classmates in the same school. If two registered teachers in different schools agree to form a joint class then children can communicate and work together - limited to those two classes.

Anything - that is anything at all - which appears on this site has been viewed by an member of our kidscapism staff, or by a registered teacher in a school. No story, text, image, or comment will ever be published without a teacher or staff member having access to that content - and the ability to edit or delete it.

As a UK-based Year Three teacher, I found it difficult to teach the ICT Unit 3e (Email) without going through the process of having children register with external email addresses.

I felt strongly (also as a parent) that 7-year olds should not have full access to email.

I therefore put this system together. It is restricted to one server and all the 'communication' happens within that server - so there is no external access and no real email addresses. Children can also only communicate with others in their class or in a teacher-approved joint collaborative class. It is therefore 100% secure, but a reasonable simulation of email in practice.

We don't know anything about your school apart from its name. You are in control of how your school is kept on our system. You need to create a class or classes. You need to add students to your school and classes. You need to encourage other teachers to sign up and manage their own classes.

There is relatively little you can do on the site, until you have some class/student content. Be sure to use pseudonyms and not to use students full real names.

Classes that are looking to collaborate with another class go through several steps. Firstly, their teacher is verified by us. Secondly, they declare on our collaboration form that they are willing to collaborate. They select another class that is also willing. The two teachers communicate (via our internal system, or by external email) and agree what to do. Our system then lets them link up - a joint class is created with the members of the two linking classes. Under the teachers' supervision, the two classes can collaborate on email or writing activities. Please see our Collaboration Instructions for fuller details.