I'm something of a nerd. In addition to this blog, I also have another called Hike with Kids. There I try to focus on my attempts to get outdoors and stay active with kids along for the journey. That site gets updates almost as frequently as this one does (insert humor here). Being a total nerd however, I somehow managed to talk about phones on that site. First about the practicality of having a rugged phone, then a brief review of a newer rugged phone, then the benefit of giving my kids rugged phones as opposed to kid specific cameras and finally an update after my daughter managed to break her rugged phone. That's a lot of phone related content for a site that's not supposed to be a tech site!
So, time to switch gears. This site is themed around technology.
The topic here comes back to my daughter. She's 9 now and my wife and I have been trying to work out some form of digital safety net for her. The first thing we considered was a child specific smart watch. Something like the SpaceTalk watches seemed like a great idea but the cost was just getting too high. There's the cost of the watch, the cost of a SIM plan and the cost of the service the watch attaches to. I'm not ruling it out (and will probably revisit the idea of a watch once my daughter moves school campuses in year 2 years) but for now, she's 9. She's almost always under adult supervision. We're just trying to build some responsible behaviors and give her a little bit of flex. The outlay for the watch doesn't stack up at this point.
So back to the drawing board, I dug through my drawer of old phones. To complicate matters I wanted a device that would supported VoLTE so my daughter would have maximum coverage irrespective of network type. I settled on my old Nokia 8 Sirocco. It's old but not insanely so (supporting Android 10) and has specs that aren't too shabby even by today's standards (Snapdragon 835, 6GB RAM, 128GB ROM). It used to be my primary phone and while I eventually switched it out for a device with a larger screen I really do miss how slim and light it was.
A quick bit of Amazon searching to find a pseudo rugged case for the phone and we're ready to go. 
The next challenge was software. I'm not looking to create the wild-west here. The goal was to find a platform that:
- allowed the phone to be managed with parental controls
- could provide location information as required
- would allow me to restrict the phone to "safe apps" only
Eventually I settled on Kiddoware. It's Android specific, (great for us) and comes with the option to purchase a lifetime subscription as opposed to yet-another endless yearly or monthly subscription.
The app uses a feature-rich web page and the "parent mode" interface in the app is just the same web page, so everything is very consistent.
Here we are with location coming through while on holiday in Healesville, Victoria. 
Locking down the applications to just the basics (effectively the key things needed for emergency communication and nothing else) is a straight forward affair, so here we are. Phone, camera, gallery (Google's offline gallery, not the online Photos app), a mapping app and a few communications apps. That's it! 
$120 later for a basic Kogan plan with 120GB of data over 12 months and we're sorted. We now have a basic digital safety net that my daughter can take with here on an as-needed basis. On the bright side if she does lose the phone, while I wont be enthused about it. I wont lose any sleep either.
As a bonus, she can still use it as a camera every time we head out.
