What you want to know before you buy a Smartwatch

Smart watches for Kids from www.vigilintbiosensors.com
Smart watches for Kids from www.vigilintbiosensors.com

Wearable technology offers a wide array of choices. Keeping track of the options is a daunting task.  Here are some quick tips.

Does it work with your smart phone?  All Smart Watches for kids are tethered to the parent’s smartphone, but you need to know not all watches work with every mobile network plan.  as

Does the watch come with a SIM Card installed?   All smartwatches that receive text, calls and data require a SIM Card.

Does the SIM card on your watch work with your mobile carrier?  Many smartwatch providers sell to customers without explaining whether their mobile carrier supports the watch in their local area.  Most smartwatches are sold without a SIM card  plan, leaving you, the customers, to tackle the issue.

How long does the battery last and can you reload with via USB?  Many smart watch customers (and their kids) complain about short battery life, often running out in mere hours. Make sure your batteries last for a full day or more.  This way you can reload the batteries every night while you sleep.

What are the important features on a watch for your kids and which do you really need?   Simple, reliable, trusted communication with your child is paramount. Many smartwatches sell a catalog of games — but your kids already have access to games on a tablet or computer at home. When they are on the way to school or outdoors playing, they shouldn’t get distracted. Wouldn’t it be better if they paid attention to their safe travel or playing with other kids?

Is your watch water-resistant or waterproof?   Most smartwatches like most watches are water-resistant, but not waterproof.   Make sure you buy a watch for your specific needs.

Can you communicate with the smartwatch?  Many smartwatches are only glamorized pedometers.  So carefully read about all the features when you choose a smartwatch.  There are only a few companies that actually want you to be able to communicate via the watch.  Apple Watches run from $1,299 for their top products all the way to $139 for their Walmart specials.  Naturally the features from each smartwatch vendor vary greatly.

Some are specifically designed to keep families together,  Vigilint Biosensors’  Hawkeye Smartwatches  inform parents, babysitters about the children in their charge.  Hawkeye Smartwatches link and work with every major U.S. mobile carrier: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, unlike most other kids smartwatches, that only work with one or two. This is due to the fact that Vigilint Biosensors offers Hawkeye smartwatches with SIM cards pre-installed and ready to use and  compatible with all major smartphone carriers for $10 per month.  Vigilint Biosensors customer service test it for you before it is shipped after you fill out the COPPA compliance form. Keeping kids safe is a top priority.

Vigilints’ Hawkeye GPS keeps a close eye on where your kids are, and if there is an emergency, allows others you designated to text or speak with them directly.   Hawkeyes  run on the proprietary SIM cards and are fully functioning right out of the box, unlike many of the very inexpensive watches that need assembly and are not out-of-the-box ready found on Amazon and other retailers.  Many come without a SIM card or a service connection to the parents’ smartphone. This is frustrating for parents who don’t have the time to become watchmakers before their kids smartwatch works.  So check the fine print before you buy.

Buying a smartwatch for your kids may be a bit confusing and overwhelming. Choosing well is worth the time and effort. Just do a bit of homework and compare features.  When you want to keep a family together by sharing parenting and babysitting with up to 3 adults and a total of 8 connections, Hawkeye smartwatches are a great solution for your young child. They stay on their little wrists. Thus they are a great alternative to buying smartphones and plans for each your 3 to 6 year olds.  Phones are too big of a responsibility for  young children.  Put a Hawkeye on their wrist and relax.  Affordable, ready to use, and designed with the parent / child relationship in mind.

 

Dr. Robin Goodman recommends to help kids feel good on the inside for a positive self image.

Stay connected with your kids. Let them know they are important to you.  Give them ideas on how to feel good about themselves. Sit down with them to make a list about all the things that makes kids unique. Help them become self-aware of their wonderful qualities. This will help their self-esteem.

Remind them of their own unique qualities when they have a hard time with other skills.  Model non-competitive behaviors with other.  If they see the parent compete with the neighbors, it will make them think they have to become competitive whether they wish to or not.   Instead point out that everyone has different qualities and that is ok. Finding the good in oneself and in others is a great practice and can become a fun game.

This will help the child become more resilient. If they have a hard time with one thing, they and you can remind them about something that they are naturally talented in. Remind them of a skill they acquired through practice.

Share with them if there is something is hard for you, so they know that it is normal that we have good days or bad days.  This will help them cope when thing are difficult. Self-esteem is closely related with a realistic self-image.

Also listen to them and pay attention to them.  If you are separated from your kids all day because of school and your work, you can connect with them through their Hawkeye Smartwatches and your Vigilint Family Assistant app.

Hawkeye Watches by Vigilint Biosensors keep parents connected to kids.

Guns, guns, guns – Americans love guns, despite the many mass murders

The Hunters Little House on the Prairie
The Hunters Little House on the Prairie

In America, we grow up with a romantic vision of being explorers who conquer the wilds and create new homes and lives in the wilderness.  During the frontier days Americans hunted for food.  They sustained themselves and lived off the land.  Beautiful vistas, wide open grasslands, forests, and log cabins by the lake were a fact of life, not such a very long time ago.

Shooting dear, rabbits, or even wild boars, geese and ducks was a way of life.  Hunting was a necessary part of sustaining the family in a land that had few stores.   It was romanticized in literature, in TV Shows and the movies.

Fast Forward to Parkland, FL and Santa Fé, TX in 2018

“I’d be comfortable with our teachers having guns,” said Tessa Ybarra, 15, a sophomore at Santa Fe High School. “If Ms. T and Ms. Perkins had guns, maybe they could have protected themselves,” she said, referring to Cynthia Tisdale and Glenda Ann Perkins, the two teachers killed on Friday.  NYT

Do you agree with Tessa Ybarra?  The gun lobby agrees with her.

The NRA, a 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt organization, claimed that they provided a means to raise millions of dollars to fund gun safety and educational projects of benefit to the general public.   While they certainly succeed in influencing Congress and have over 5 Million members, and a supportive group of wealthy individuals who support assault rifle sales to 18 year olds, the gun safety part of their proclaimed mission is failing miserably. Now they practically promote gun violence.

“I don’t understand why I could still go in a store and buy a weapon of war,” said Sam Zeif, 18, sobbing after he described texting his family members during the attack. “Let’s never let this happen again, please, please.” Reuters

Why is it that Americans as a whole, can’t understand that guns are used to kill innocent children and adults?  

With school shooting on the rise it actually is not romantic any longer. Good Housekeeping reported that  since the beginning of 2018, 20 people were killed at school to do gun violence.

Recie Tisdale, son of Cynthia Tisdale, who was a substitute teacher at Santa Fe High School. told the Washington Post, “She started substitute teaching because she loved to help children. She didn’t have to do it. She did it because she loved it.”

Gun violence is not romantic.  Letting go of the Frontiers’ men fantasy will take a long time.  It is so compelling.  Meanwhile stay in touch with your kids and parents.  Talk to them, stay aware of what they are going through.   The Vigilint Parental Assistant App is designed to allow parents to communicate via  Hawkeye Smartwatches with their elementary school children. Harvard research shows that stress affects brain development. The damage caused to the next generation goes way beyond the gun violence.

Protect, Encourage and Communicate with Your Children Always

Photo by https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/gun-deaths-wars/

Vigilint Biosensors and School Districts in California work together to increase school safety.

San Jose, California –  May 1, 2018 – Vigilint Biosensors, leading supplier of Family Assistant Parental Services through smartwatches, is extending its Educational Support Programs which increases school safety, helps child learning and raises money for Educational Foundations, Schools, PTAs, and Booster ClubsAfter successful pilot programs in San Ramon and Sacramento California school districts, Viglint Biosensors is offering the program to qualified organizations in all fifty states.

“Vigilint Family Assistant Services provide parents with life-altering insights collected from the kid’s smart watch that can inform parents of a child’s location and allows them to speak when needed,” said Kris Narayan, Chairman of Vigilint™ Biosensors. Mr. Narayan continued, “I am grateful Vigilint Biosensors can get our smart watches to the children, parents and schools that want the help kids with deal with stress and adversity to improve our children’s emotional resilience.”

Vigilint Biosensors Education Programs allow school districts to raise money while they provide kids smart watch phones and software to parents and their children which increase school safety. Modern tools like Vigilint Family Assistant help working parents stay in touch with their kids via calls, chat and the ability to guide the kids 24/7.  Kids have access to parents each time they need their parents’ input and feedback.  Hawkeye kid’s smart watches and the Vigilint Family Assistant app allow parents to create custom SafeZones™. School safety is increased when at the moment the child moves out of the SafeZone™, parents are alerted.

Knowing exactly where and how our children are is a major comfort for parents and kids.  Each kids smart watch holds up to 20 parent-selected numbers that children can call. Kids are able to speak to their siblings and close friends through a direct kid-to-kid “walkie-talkie” connection. The more parents and kids communicate the less stress they have due to wondering and worrying. Relaxed parents enjoy happier and more confident kids that have a better, healthier and smarter life thanks to increase emotional resilience as recent studies by the Harvard Child Development show. For more information regarding kids smart watches and child learning, please click here.

Tonja Jarrell, Principal of Paso Verde School, in California’s capital city: “Partnering with Vigilint Biosensors provides a valuable resource to our school community. We work with families and the community to offer solutions that increase school safety, allows our staff and scholars to focus on teaching and make our students feel safe enough to learn thereby increasing their outcomes.”

Th improved communications via kids smart watches help teachers deal with children’s and faculties’ anxieties about the fears regarding school safety related to the recent increase of shootings at schools:  “My experiences in the educational community, have shown that these tragedies affect all of us, not just the families involved,” said Nancy Phelps, President Coyote Creek Learning Fund. “Vigilint Biosensors software and smartwatches help protect our kids while providing parents peace of mind.”

Every school, school program, non-profit or educational program manager is invited to join the Vigilint Biosensors Education Program, thereby increasing funding for vital programs, raising awareness of how to help children learn better and increase school safety.

About Vigilint Biosensors

Hawkeye kids smart watches from Vigilint Biosensors provide fun and safe solutions to families and younger children: communications and learning for children and peace of mind for parents. The combination of the best location technologies (GPS, GNSS, A-GPS and sensors) will easily locate your child, anytime and anywhere. Visit http://www.vigilint.store/ for complete product details.

Vigilint Biosensors is dedicated to improving the quality of care that parents and senior caregivers provide through a complete 360o intelligent family care assistant, that connects family members together via wearable devices like Hawkeye. Vigilint Biosensors provides the family/caregivers with a cloud infrastructure of devices and software services, which strives to improve time management and reduce stress by improved non-intrusive care for kids, seniors, and other loved ones in need. This is achieved through the most modern application of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies to life data that provide alerts, if and when needed.  “When those we care about are well, we can relax and focus on our day.” www.vigilintbiosensors.com

Learn more about our dedicated team:  Vigilint Biosensors 

Learn more about our products and services:  Vigilint Store

Vigilint Biosensors
20315 McKean Rd
San Jose, CA 95120

bizdev@vigilintbio.com

 

Paso Verde School in Sacramento joins Vigilint Biosensors Education Program

Vigilint Biosensors and Paso Verde School District in Sacramento, California work together to increase school safety and raise child self-esteem.

San Jose, California –  April 29, 2018 – Vigilint Biosensors, leading supplier of Family Assistant Parental Services through smartwatches, is expanding its joint program with school districts with the addition of the Paso Verde School in Sacramento, CA to provide kid smart watch phones and software to parents and their children.

Tonja Jarrell, Principal of Paso Verde School, in California’s capital city: “Partnering with Vigilint Biosensors provides a valuable resource to our school community. We work with families and the community to offer solutions that increase school safety, allows our staff and scholars to focus on teaching and make our students feel safe enough to learn thereby increasing their outcomes.”

Reduced school safety and child self-esteem costs real dollars. The Sacramento Bee regularly reports about the high cost of bullying to the emotional welfare of students.  It costs California $267 Million each year. A recent study conducted by Stephen Russell, a professor of child development at the University of Texas, Austin, and published by School Psychology Quarterly, found that 10.4 percent of students statewide reported missing at least one school day in the last month because they felt unsafe. Roughly half of the students also said they experienced bullying because of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability.

“Vigilint Family Assistant Services provide parents with life-altering insights collected from the kid’s smartwatch that can save a child from bullying and informs parents of a child’s location even when communications are jammed during shootings, ” said Kris Narayan, Chairman of Vigilint™ Biosensors. Mr. Narayan continued, “I am grateful Vigilint can get our smartwatches to the children, parents and schools that want them.”

Vigilint Biosensors is committed to provide Parents and Children with tools that protect and raise self-esteem via products that inform and communicate at all times.  Parents are able to talk with their children about their lives in the moment. With the hawkeye kid smart watch phone and the Vigilint Family Assistant cloud services, parents provide their kids guidance on how to better communicate with others.  During times of bullying their kids can allow parents to listen in and provide guidance in real-time.  These valuable tools leave children feeling empowered and protected.  Kids are able to share their feelings which lowers the chance of anxiety, depression and feelings of helplessness. They know both their parents care and are with them at all times. It helps fathers and working mothers to be more engaged with their young kids. The fitness tracker allows parents to encourage their children to engage in physical fitness activities during recess.

The Vigilint Biosensors Non-Profit Educational Support Programs generously offers a $20 donation to participating school districts when a parent purchases hawkeye kid smart watch phone plus the monthly Parental Assistant Service Subscription, allowing parents to better connect with their kids and support their school. A Win-Win. Through the program, Vigilint is also providing hawkeye kid smart watch phones to schools for auction with proceeds going to support STEM and safety programs. Vigilint Biosensors is currently expanding this program to school districts throughout the United States.

About Paso Verde
PVS is committed to developing resilient students by providing quality instruction and challenging learning experiences in a safe and nurturing environment, which will foster life-long learning and responsible citizenship. We are honored to partner with our families, and community to provide an academic experience to our students that Is relevant, rigorous, and based on trusting relationships. Parents have an opportunity to work as an integral part of the PVS community by coming to their child’s classroom, communicating with their child’s teacher, volunteering and attending school events and fundraisers, joining our Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) and Boosters, working with the School Site Council (SSC), and the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

About Vigilint Biosensors
Hawkeye Smart Watches from Vigilint Biosensors supply fun and safe solutions to families with younger children providing: communications and learning for children with peace of mind for parents. The combination of the best location technologies (GPS, GNSS, A-GPS and sensors) will easily locate your child, anytime and anywhere. Visit http://vigilint.store/hawkeye/

Vigilint Biosensors is dedicated to improving the quality of care that parents and senior caregivers provide through a complete 360o intelligent family care assistant, that connects family members together via wearable devices like hawkeye. Vigilint Biosensors provides the family/caregivers with a cloud infrastructure of devices and software services, which strive to improve time management and improve non-intrusive care for kids, seniors, and other loved ones in need thereby reducing stress for all types of caregivers. This is achieved through the most modern application of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies to life data that provide alerts, if and when needed.  “When those we care about are well, we can relax and focus on our day.” www.vigilintbiosensors.com

Learn more about us and our dedicated team: Click on Vigilint Biosensors or contact as us at

Vigilint Biosensors
20315 McKean Rd
San Jose, CA 95120
info@vigilint.store

To join the Safe-Kid Program or Education Program, please contact Kris Narayan at kris.narayan@vigilintbio.com or call him at +1 408 497 1197. We donate part of the Hawkeye Smartwatches sales back to the school for STEM, Sports, Music or other programs.

To get an introductions and appointments with the appropriate contact persons or press materials and white paper links contact

Edie Okamoto at +1 510 693-0166 or edie.okamoto@meet3chords.com

Parents need to carefully monitor younger kids use of apps, as not all are COPPA compliant

Musical.ly App
Musical.ly App
Digital Companies Span the Globe

Musical.ly is a fun app for teens It is also one of the latest company that is facing a similar plight as Facebook. International regulations and laws conflicts.

Privacy laws around the world are not the same and with the most recent trend to stop international collaborations, it will become ever more challenging.  Musical.ly is a Chinese owned company.  Therefore COPPA, the organization that protects children under 13 in the US, may be rather meaningless to them, and their Boston US office. The app is designed for teens.

In China the entire internet is regulated by the government.  Free press, per se, does not exist in China and everything any Chinese citizen does has to be government approved or at least tolerated.  Like elsewhere, human trade is rampant in China and therefore Chinese citizens seem to be very protective of their kids. In 2014 the Chinese government busted four different human trafficking rings and saved 382 babies

As a result, Chinese business managers, may not be aware of the issues parents face in an open and free society.  Their parental guide clearly indicates that they provide valuable advice to parents, on how to protect their kids, and it is clear that they give full responsibility to the parents.  This has brought them into legal conflict with the US based COPPA rules, that demands, companies protect underage children, children younger than 13, from harm.

Facebook is running afoul with EU privacy laws, and laws holding companies liable for deaths that result from spreading illegal hate speech.  Chinese companies run into problems with COPPA; German companies were caught cheating against Clean Air laws in the US.  We live in an international world and we all have to become more aware and respectful of each other and our own needs and preferences.  Particularly when it come to protecting young children, prevention is worth much more than feeling sorry later on.

One way to prevent stranger danger is to give young kids Hawkeye Smartwatches, that simply don’t allow apps that are not COPPA compliant. Check out www.vigilintbiosensors.com for ways to accomplish this.  Maybe soon Musical.ly will provide a kids friendly version of their app on that gated kid-friendly system. We can always hope.  In the meantime – let’s watch over our kids carefully.

Positive Kids and Parents Interactions assure healthy Brain Development

Hawkeye Smartwatches with Vigilint Family Assistant App
Hawkeye Smartwatches with Vigilint Family Assistant App
Science shows that the more parents interact with their children the happier their lives will turn out.

Talking, writing, encouraging, hugging and interaction with your children in their formative years, is not just good parenting skills. It set them on a path for the rest of their lives. The Harvard Child Development Science findings show that the ability to communicate with parents literally shapes the biology of children’s brains’ architecture. The reciprocal relationships of “Serve and Return” back and forth interaction is crucial for good parenting to maximize your child’s cognitive functions, emotionally support and social competence. As a result, the kids have increased learning capabilities. Healthy development in the early years is the foundation of everything that a child learns and how the child learns, how healthy the child will be throughout their life.

Protect, Encourage and Communicate with Your Children

These good parenting skills help parents guide communications to provide a sense of independence in their kids as well as helping be more assured. Hawkeye smartwatches for kids inform, protect and reassure parents/caregivers by allowing access to their kids and the ability to provide guidance every time it is needed. The fun Hawkeye Smartwatches bluetooth kid-to-kid communication enables a child to talk to their friends ‘walkie-talkie’ style. Hawkeye Smartwatches also offer a step tracker feature which kids love, as they compare their physical activities with their friends during recess.

Modern tools like Vigilint Family Assistant help working parents stay in touch with their kids via calls, chat and the ability to guide the kids 24/7.  Kids have access to parents each time they need their parents’ input and feedback.

Hawkeye Smartwatches and the Vigilint Family Assistant app allow parents to create custom SafeZones™. The moment the child moves out of the SafeZone™, parents are alerted.  Imagine you are cooking and the kids are on the playground, park, afternoon program.  Knowing exactly where your child is  a major comfort for both parents and kids.

Each watch holds up to 20 parent-selected numbers that children can call. Kids are able to speak to their siblings and close friends through a direct kid-to-kid “walkie-talkie” connection. The more parents and kids communicate the less stress they have due to wondering and worrying. Relaxed parents enjoy happier and more confident kids that have a better, healthy and smarter life.

Source:  Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University and www.vigilintbiosensors.com/