Information for Teachers and Parents

What is included on this page?

We will be discussing who we are, what we do, parental controls, teacher related questions, publisher and media related questions and other topics in the form of a Q&A.

 What is Jappleng?

Jappleng is a unique (and only) Social Edutainment Platform for the Japanese enthusiast community. We provide lessons in the Japanese language, Culture and way of life for those interested. We believe that a combination of education, social interaction and entertainment is key to a successful learning path and have combined them all to create what is known as Jappleng or Jappleng University. This project began in late 2005, released early 2006 and has gradually evolved over time. We are proud of being able to bridge the Japanese and English communities together and provide resources which schools may use for their classrooms.

Is Jappleng / Jappleng University a For-Profit Corporation or Institution?

Not at all, while Jappleng may one day become for-profit to maintain our online presence, at the present time, we are only volunteers with no physical location.

How many people are working on Jappleng?

There is only one person developing and maintaining the website and services but the community builds the content freely and openly.

How will this impact the overall quality, security, and safety of those visiting Jappleng?

I am a full-stack developer with over 20-years of industry experience. I have great knowledge in providing quality and security for software that I write however it would be silly to say that my work or anyone’s work can prevent all attacks. I am proud to say that I consistently spend time improving security on the site in every manner as possible.

What we consider personal data is encrypted (not plain text) and the website is SSL secure. Many of the user identifiable data is anonymized to give each user a higher degree of anonymity with administrators of the website. Please keep in mind that technology keeps changing and the validity of these claims may change every few months. However I will do my best to remain compliant.

Is Jappleng Free to use?

Yes, Jappleng is absolutely free to use. We don't have any method of accepting payments of any kind or donations. 

Are there advertisements?

No, we do not advertise on our website.

Are there parental controls?

Yes, in the user settings panel, it is possible to configure what sections you permit your child to view. For instance, if you do not wish them to gain access to J-Spot Social but wish to permit them on the education and Clubs section, you may toggle this. To avoid the child to override these settings, a unique PIN and E-Mail can be enabled to further secure the account. Lastly, the maturity setting permits the user/parent to set what kind of content should be censored. By default, maturity toggle is enabled and any content that might not be family friendly will be censored such as swears posted by users, education lessons that are more adult-oriented etc…

How does Jappleng handle harassment and ERP?

We take pride in protecting our users, whether they are guests, or they are members of the site. They are like family to us and just like family, we mean to do everything we can to protect them. We have established our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Cookies, Letter to Parents and Teachers (the page you are on), have included numerous moderation features and a comprehensive system that is continuously improved upon. We want to make Jappleng a safe and enjoyable place for everyone and because of that we do everything we can to resolve disputes and suspend / remove toxic behaviors that may occur. While some J-Communities may permit ERP (erotic role-play), it is strictly not permitted here. S.P.A.M. is also not permitted and not tagging posts appropriately will also likely lead to suspension of accounts.

I am a Teacher or Tutor, what can I do for Jappleng?

We hope that Jappleng becomes widespread and used throughout classrooms around the world. Presently there are a few schools that are using Jappleng for references and for its lessons. We have also been featured in a few Universities which is a big deal to us. If you wish to use our lessons / resources, you are more than welcome to if it’s for non-profit reasons. For-profit reasons will need to contact us such as for Publishing. However, we do love to hear it when a school/teacher uses our materials, it tells us that we are doing a good job and should keep moving forward!

Has Jappleng ever had Schools / Universities use the content?

Yes, various schools around the world use Jappleng on a regular basis and we're proud of this fact. Many schools allow Jappleng to be used as a means to earn school credit with certain amount of study hours. While using an account, a student can keep track of how many hours they are studying for each lesson and module and teachers may review all of this.

I would like to make lessons for Jappleng / my classroom

That is exciting to hear and we would like to talk more about this! Please send us an e-mail by using our Contact form to learn more. Note: Our contact form does not yet exist, but you may use our community forums as a substitute.

Is Jappleng Encrypted?

Yes, important information is encrypted using multiple factor and secret methods. Additionally, we only permit HTTPS access to the site, meaning we require a successful handshake connection between the user and our website. Private user data are not stored in plain text, nor is it stored in cookies. We also encrypt our cookies.

What kind of data is collected?

Members are required to enter their username, e-mail, password and date of birth but nothing else. However, all activity performed on this website / service is monitored for both Quality Assurance and Security reasons. We have no plans to sell personal information to third parties. Please see our Privacy Policy for details about how we collect and use your data.

What about Google Trackers?

We presently use Google Analytics to track visitor’s behaviors on our website, however the information is completely anonymous and is not tied to any individual account. Users may decide to opt-out of this if they wish. In the future, we will most likely not use any third-party trackers. Additionally, this information helps us identify what sections people love the most and what sections need improvement.

Are cookies bad?

Not our cookies! They are delicious and required for users to stay logged-in, otherwise there is no way for us to know who you are. Well, there are alternatives but Cookies is the way we chose to do it. To learn more about our cookies, visit Cookies? Om nom!

What is the age requirements on this website? The requirement by US law is 13 or over, however it is important to be reminded that Jappleng is a community just like any social network that you may know and as such, people may troll, harass, and post things that may not be appropriate despite it being against our rules. (They will get punished if caught) As a result, we recommend that you enable maturity settings and permit only allowable sections as you feel comfortable.

Does Jappleng work in helping people with disabilities?

Yes, over time we are adding features that can help people with disabilities use this website. For instance, we have Day / Night mode which can help those with vision impairment. We have the option to toggle the font setting so it uses Open Dyslexic font instead for those with dyslexia. Eventually, we would like to also support text-to-speech and other helpful features.

Can Clubs be Used in conjunction of school clubs?

Yes! That is the purpose! We would love to see more integration with real school clubs using Club Jappleng! We are also presently working on a school club itinerary and printable club materials.

Is Jappleng COPPA compliant?

While registering with Jappleng we ask all of our users if they are of legal age (13US / 16 EU).  We do not use advertisements or trackers on our website to target children or adults. We do not collect personal information of users and sensitive information such as passwords are encrypted. Our website is targeted towards a general audience.

Is Jappleng CIPA compliant?

This is hard to tell since we're not very well versed with this compliance. Jappleng contains content that can be published by other members of the website and we do moderate reports. We require all members of the site to be at least 13 years of age and any material that is flagged becomes invisible unless the maturity filter is toggled. We do not actively monitor content on the website which includes chat rooms, forums social network, clubs etc… Only one person has created and operates this website and it would be impossible to further improve the website while monitoring it on a volunteer basis. Be that as it may, we have never had any issues so far regarding posting of adult materials or anything that could be deemed harmful. We are Education first. We do not recommend children under the age of 13 to use this service.

Does unblocking Jappleng affect E-Funding?

Supposedly not. If necessary, I would recommend the following sections to be blocked:

https://www.jappleng.com/entertainment - Contains news and information about Japanese entertainment such as anime, manga, j-pop and more. (Not yet released)

https://www.jappleng.com/jspot/ - This is our exclusive social network (Jappleng Spot). Only members can see this but it can be disabled by the parent / teacher if needed or wildcard blocked to prevent use of it. We use it to help students connect with others learning Japanese.

https://www.jappleng.com/forums/ - These are our forums, this section doesn't need to be accessed by students but there are a lot of questions and answers regarding Japan and the Japanese language.

https://www.jappleng.com/clubs/ - This section can be wildcard blocked. It is a place where people may create and join clubs (fan clubs or study groups). Due to the fact that there are fan clubs, it may not  be permitted by some school districts.

Is the games section for entertainment?

Yes and no. It's commonly known as “Edutainment” where you combine entertainment and education together. All of our games are education first. Kana PoP for example is a typing game where Japanese characters fall from the sky and the player must type the letters using roman characters (English) and destroy them. It's similar to space invaders but it improves the student's recognition of these characters and also improves their typing ability.

What if there is adult content on the site?

If you encounter adult content that was posted by other users, we recommend that you flag the content for review.