Welcome! This forum has a treasure trove of great info – Scouters helping Scouters! Just a heads up, though - all content, information, and opinions shared on this forum are those of the author, not the BSA.
OK - doing a little market research - In your opinion of best practice - whose responsibility is it to maintain the Logs for a unit? In other words, how do you believe logs should work.
Unit Leader or designate (for youth, leaders and parents)
Scout enters own - Leader approves
Parent enters for Scout - Leader approves
Adult (leaders and parents) enters own - Leader approves
Unit Advancement Chair (for Scouts, leaders and parents)
Committee Secretary (for Scouts, leaders and parents)
Outdoor Activity Coordinator (for Scouts, leaders and parents)
Service Coordinator (for Scouts, leaders and parents)
Youth Scribe (for all Scouts and adults) - Leader approves
Patrol Leaders (for Scouts in patrol) - Leader approves
I think a person with permissions to the account should be able to enter logs for the scout and parents. Having a leader approve the entry is a double check that it is correct.
Having a person or persons designated to also do entry helps standardize the entries.
Setting a permission level to only do log entries would be nice. Then the hiking coordinator would not get permission to do more than they need to.
Your survey appears to be for the Scouts, BSA program. I think your survey results might be different if your survey was done by Scouting program instead of asking everyone. Which is to say, your current survey results may be misleading.
May I suggest first asking at which functioning grade level is the youth member responsible for maintaining their own logs?
I used “functioning grade level” above because Scouting also serves Special Scouts.
With the exception of the Cub Scouting program, Scouting (and Exploring) programs are youth run.
Has anyone look at how the
Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, 15 U.S.C. 6501–6505 (COPPA), 1998
Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). 2000
might affect how collecting hiking, camping and other perforance data for children under age 13 is done?
I think there needs to be as much access as possible for the owner of a record to be able to maintain that record. The primary owner of any activity log is the scout performing the activity. My troop has had some success with Scouts “owning” their logs, but for the most part they “forget” to add events. We had one Scout recently who realized the importance of camping logs when he missed eligibility for an OA election because he was short by one camping night. He scoured his log, initially upset because he has accumulated 39 total nights since becoming a Scout, but was able to verify that the count was correct within the scope of OA rules. We’re hopeful that he will successfully pass this lesson on to the other Scouts in his patrol and will facilitate that learning.
I do not see the difference as long as parent, scout, or even den leader enters but should be approved by advance chair, cub/sout or Master, or Assistant Master. Then any questions can be appropriated to the correct level.
I think there needs to be a distinction between Cubs and other levels of Scouting. In Cubs, I think it’s up to more the parents, leaders, and advancement chair.
