Martin Luther King Jr. Education Poster
December 31, 2019
February Education Poster
February 4, 2020Technologies Keeping Schools Safe in 2020
Keeping schools and students safe is a huge task, including everything from physical safety to cyberbullying. The needs of each school vary as much as their size and budgets. Technology can make a difference in helping school administrators detect and mitigate potential threats or issues.
If you are an educator looking to improve your school security and safety, here are four technologies used around the country to keep schools safe.
If you are an educator looking to improve your school security and safety, here are four technologies used around the country to keep schools safe.
1. Social Media Scanners
Social Media has millions of users. In today's world, social media users post daily about their thoughts, feelings, and opinions. Administrators can view social media in a negative light since it provides a channel for cyberbullying, harassment, and other possible dangers to students. However, social media can be used as a tool to detect potential threats or issues.Messages, posts, and photos placed on public social media can help parents, teachers, and administrators spot concerning behavior. It’s been proven that at-risk children for suicide and cyberbullying say more about their thoughts on social media than they do to a trusted adult. The same can be said for individuals who are exhibiting dangerous behavior.
Social media monitoring is an emerging technology that school administrators are applying to scan for potential dangers. Monitoring can be delivered through a variety of ways at different levels of intrusion. Nonetheless, each method employs the same concept—the system scans for search terms that might relate to guns, drugs, bullying, harassment, or other threats outside of the school community. The system will flag messages with those search terms, and administrators receive an email or text in real time with those flagged messages.
2. Mass Messaging Software
Mass messaging is an invaluable tool for messaging to parents, faculty, staff, and students in case of a threat. Messages can be sent in the form of an email, voice automation, or text. If you invest in this tool, you can use the mass messaging software for more than just alerting the school community—use it to send important reminders or notices to parents, students, and staff.Make it easy to send text updates and alerts to thousands of students and parents. When it comes to mass messaging, schools have a few choices to check out, such as SimpleTexting.
3. Visitor Management Systems
Visitor Management Systems not only keep your school more secure, but they also help track, report, and manage all visitor activity at your facilities. Most visitor management software mitigates liability.KeepnTrack takes a proactive approach toward incident prevention by replacing the unreliable paper sign-in forms with electronically-stored data. The software can identify and filter potential threats before they gain access to your school by running instant sex offender and criminal background checks. When possible dangers or issues arise, KeepnTrack can send out text alerts to administrators. Find out more about how you can keep your school safe with KeepnTrack.
4. Anonymous Alerts
Students are the first to see potential dangers but may feel uncomfortable coming forward. Anonymous Alert is an app to prevent bullying or dangerous situations like weapons at school. Students, parents, and staff can anonymously report incidents by downloading the app to their mobile phones.Students can report suspicious activity, drugs, harassment, family issues, and campus safety concerns to school administrators or counselors. The app helps to fight against bullying and other threatening activity in schools by giving students an opportunity to come forward safely without the need to identify themselves.
