Web Watch

Karla Jackson, The Tampa Tribune, 27 Mar 2003

TAMPA - Working mother Joanne Patton doesn't have to leave her desk to check on her son, Alex, 2, as he goes about his day in the toddler room at Good Shepherd Lutheran Early Childhood Education Center in south Tampa.

With a few clicks of a mouse, she is virtually there, watching in a small window on her computer screen as Alex colors in class and plays on the playground.

"We can talk about things he did during the day," says Patton, a mortgage processor for Real Works, a south Tampa real estate company. "It gives me peace of mind."

Good Shepherd, a new preschool that opened in January, is one of a handful of local child care centers that offer Internet- based monitoring for parents. It is a trend that is slowly spreading nationwide as computer technology improves and parental paranoia increases.

"More and more centers are opening up to the idea," says John Lewison, chief operating officer of WatchMeGrow, the Texas-based monitoring service that Good Shepherd uses. "These days, more and more parents are concerned about safety and security."

WatchMeGrow was one of the first to offer Internet monitoring in the child care industry in 1996, Lewison says. Since then, dozens of similar companies have come and gone.

"As the bottom fell out of the dot-com market, many companies lost their funds and went by the wayside," he says. "Now, there's just a few strong national and regional companies."

WatchMeGrow is in about 100 centers in the United States and Canada, including Miami, Jacksonville, Lake Worth and Weston.

Kids R Kids, a Westchase day care center, has offered Internet monitoring for three years, owner Steve Silvers says. His center uses a system from San Diego-based Guardiancam.

"When parents first sign up they use it a lot more because it's comforting to them," Silvers says. "But I believe that after a while, once they become more comfortable, they use it less."

Typically, a day care purchases the cameras, server and other equipment from the service provider - an expense of $10,000 to $20,000 - and pays a monthly service fee for the Web site. They must also buy digital subscriber line (DSL) service from a local provider.

Centers typically factor a portion of the cost into their tuition rates, rather than charge parents a fee for the service. Lewison says WatchMeGrow generally costs a center between $5 to $10 per child per month, depending on the number of children enrolled.

"I definitely think it's worth it," says Silvers.

Cameras are set up in classrooms, playgrounds or whatever areas are selected for monitoring at the school. The color images are broadcast to a secure Web site, where they can be accessed only by viewers with a password. The picture is refreshed every 1 to 1 1/2 seconds, so the broadcast is a little choppy, similar to a security camera at a bank or convenience store.

"We expect to have video quality in the not-to-distant future," Lewison says.

Unlike some services, WatchMeGrow has a four-hour archive of images, so parents can go back in time to see what they may have missed.

"If they want to make sure [their child] actually napped, they can go back and check," says Michelle Stainton, Good Shepherd's director.

Stainton likes to use it when parents come in for conferences. They can watch the child while they talk and review recent behavior.

Patton set up passwords for Alex's grandparents and aunts, many of whom live out of town, so they can see him more often.

"They love it," Patton says. "They always e-mail me first to see what he's wearing. It helps them pick him out."

The monitoring service "was one of the deciding factors" Patton considered when she moved Alex from a preschool near her home in Brandon to Good Shepherd.

"Parents choose our school because they like the facility and the program," Stainton says. "But being able to know what is going on with your child is such a relief."