BASE Education Fireword Guide

BASE Education Fireword Guide 

This guide will help Educators understand the importance of Firewords, where Educators can find Firewords, review Firewords. 

What is a fireword™?	A fireword™ is one or more words that a student types while taking a module that the system determines to be potentially dangerous, either to the student or their peers. If a fireword™ is detected, the system will send out an email notification to the student’s supervising adult.
How are they captured?	When a student is taking a module, they are asked to answer several questions throughout. As a student types, the system analyzes the text and identifies potentially dangerous language, even if the student deletes it from their final response. The sentence that contained the fireword(s)™ is captured and displayed in the admin portal for review by the supervising adult.
What do you mean by “potentially dangerous”?	In the context of firewords™,  “potentially dangerous” refers to language indicating that either (1) the student may be willing/planning to do serious physical harm to themselves or someone they know or (2) that they are being seriously abused by someone else. For example, “I am going to punch my friend,” is not considered potentially dangerous because while this phrase indicates somewhat violent behavior, it is not dangerous enough to warrant a notification to the supervising adult. However, “I am going to kill my friend” would be flagged as a fireword™ because it indicates the possibility of serious physical harm.
Why was/wasn’t _____ flagged as a fireword™?	The system checks for certain words and phrases and determines whether they could be dangerous or not based on the context in which they were used. It also takes misspellings into account. This means there could be some false positives on the detection of dangerous language. We understand that the system isn't perfect, but we are working to improve it all the time. Keep in mind that we like to be cautious and prefer to flag things that might not be dangerous in favor of missing something that could be considered dangerous.
Is there a list of firewords™ that we can access?	We don't have an exact list of firewords™. This is because most of the dangerous language we try to identify requires an evaluation of the context in which it was used. However, to give you a better idea of what we consider potentially dangerous, we have provided a list of phrases below that would be flagged as firewords™.
Can we suggest new words/phrases to be flagged as a fireword™?	Yes! We will gladly take feedback about how the system is working as well as suggestions around what language you think should be classified as potentially dangerous. While it’s not guaranteed that we will add it to our system, we will seriously consider it.

What are some example words/phrases that would be flagged as firewords™?
“I hate my stupid life.” “If someone finds out, I’m dead meat.” “My friend told me to stab myself.” “I like to bring a pistol to school.” “I wish I was never born.” “I fear for my safety.” “I killed my test.” “I murdered my friend.”	“Nobody appreciates me.” “My brother and I are failures.” “I do not matter.” “I was molested by someone.” “We are addicted to heroin.” “Overdose” “Sexual predator” “My favorite band is Suicidal    Tendencies.” “We hang out at my house”	As you can see, a few of these phrases may be harmless, but when students use words like “dead,” “kill,” or “suicidal,” we prefer to err on the side of caution, notify the supervising adult, and let them make the final call on whether or not it is dangerous language.

Receiving Fireword Notifications 

Managing Firewords is a crucial part of the BASE platform. Firewords help to bring the human element to the platform and experience. The goal of Firewords is to help you identify struggling students so that intervention can occur quickly. Firewords can provide you with information that will help guide impactful conversations with the students you support. Please work with your school/district/organizations Administration to confirm the expectations with managing Firewords.
Notifications can be turned on ensuring that Room leaders are informed of the Firewords being used.  To turn on your notifications, navigate to the desired room  Click on the pencil to edit Room settings
Click to add or remove the check mark in the box to “Receive fireword notifications”  Further clarify if you’d prefer to get notifications regarding Firewords for the modules that you are assigned to only.
Email notifications will come from BASE to your email inbox for Red and Orange Firewords. Yellow will remain in the platform.
When logged in to BASE, there are multiple places to find your Fireword notifications.

Where to see Firewords

Firewords are an important part of your BASE implementation. Below are a few different ways to view your students’ Firewords

From the user menu, Educators can see a preview of all Firewords status.  Red flames indicate Unreviewed Firewords.
When opening a User Profile, clicking on the Unreviewed Firewords that will have a red number indicating how many firewords need to be reviewed
To create a report that will display unreviewed Firewords and user information, you can download the All User Data report.  Navigate to the Users Menu, and locate the “User Actions” button in the upper right corner. Click to view options.
Click on the Download User Data option  This will create a .CSV report (example below) that will include User profile information, a count of unreviewed Firewords, and examples of the statement that turned the alert on.

Fireword Alerts 

Firewords are assessed with a colorcoded level system The color system from Highest importance to lowest is  Red, Orange, Yellow  These will be reflected in the Fire icon, and where reviewing the student submissions   The Firewords colors are :  Red - student may require immediate assistance Orange - student potentially needs assistance Yellow - possible concern  Email alerts will be sent to users who have notifications set up for red and orange Firewords only. Yellow alerts will be reflected in the platform.

Colors	Suggested Practices for Fireword Management
Red Alerts	Review as soon as possible
Orange Alerts	By end of school day
Yellow Alerts	By end of week