As many of you know, during the summer season, we try to update our blog daily with “real-time” information about our trips in the field. The blog has proven to be enormously popular, and we’re looking forward to getting it up and running again this summer. Several families have asked us the very good question about what precautions we take regarding the identification of our students over the course of the summer. As we rapidly approach the summer, we thought we would speak to that question and make our blog policies clear to new and returning parents and students alike. We invite any questions or comments you may have about our policies or the blog, in general.

First, we never identify students by their full name in the text of our blogs. For example, we will not write “Carrie Matthews reports that her favorite meal is tuna burritos.” We may, however, write something to the effect of, “Coast to Quebec leader John Smith reports that Carrie and Katie took turns singing Hall & Oates hits up all of the hills today, much to the delight of the rest of the group.”

Second, we will not identify students in pictures by name at all. We will instead refer to them as members of their group (e.g., “see the picture below of several indomitable members of our Coast to Coast trip gathering for ice cream at the Paris, Texas Dairy Freeze”).

Third, we will not specifically identify the location of our groups. Many family members and friends follow the progress of many of our trips and our Coast to Coast trip, in particular, with great interest. We will continue to update their progress, but will indicate only that they are in a particular town, without further specificity. Thus, we may say “our group rolled into Prescott, Arizona late this afternoon,” but will not say “our group is happy to be staying at the ABC Campground outside of Prescott tonight.”

We hope that these policies tow an appropriate line between the desire to share in what your children and their friends are doing with Apogee this summer, and a well-placed concern about sharing too much information in today’s online climate.

One additional note, more about the realities of our blog than its policies: we will make every effort to post information about your student’s trip as we hear from our leaders in the field. However, we do not want our desire for blog-worthy information to distract our leaders from their core mission — running great trips. Thus, we do not post about every trip, every day. As our leaders check in with us, though, you can be sure that we’ll be asking them about all matters high and low — and will be posting their news as soon as we can.