In today’s educational environments, ensuring the safety of students, faculty, and staff is more critical than ever. As campuses grow and adopt new technologies, leveraging device broadcasting has emerged as a powerful tool to improve communication, enhance emergency response, and keep everyone informed. By implementing strategies that harness the full potential of device broadcasting, institutions can streamline notifications and create a more responsive, connected campus. Here, we explore three impactful ways schools and universities can use device broadcasting to strengthen campus safety and foster a secure learning environment.
Concerns About Staying Safe on School Campuses
With incidents ranging from fires to intruders trespassing on campus, it’s no wonder over 82% of American college students feel concerned about their safety. This concern is shared by parents globally, anxious for their children’s well-being away from home. Unfortunately, many schools struggle with their communication systems, potentially undermining their safety protocols. Just think about it—if someone were to trespass on campus and the notifications about safety measures didn’t reach students and staff quickly, they’d be left in the dark and potentially in danger. This really underscores the urgent need to fix these communication gaps.
Fortunately, the safety of large venues is finally getting some much-needed attention. With heightened awareness of potential threats and new legislation like Martyn’s Law in the UK, there’s a growing focus on emergency preparedness for human threats in public spaces. This shift is driving the adoption of advanced emergency response systems, which are essential for educational institutions. By embracing these advanced technologies and effective strategies, schools can provide peace of mind to both students and teachers, ensuring everyone feels safer and more secure.
Bridging Communication Gaps with Device Broadcasting
So, why do gaps in the communication infrastructure of educational institutions persist? The reasons vary but are often interconnected:
- Budget Constraints: Many educational institutions, especially public schools and smaller colleges, operate on tight budgets, making it difficult to invest in comprehensive communication systems.
- Training and Usability Issues: Even when schools manage to invest in new technologies, training staff to use them effectively can be a significant hurdle. Effective communication requires knowledgeable users, but without proper training, staff might struggle to run these systems efficiently—especially if the interfaces are too complex or not user-friendly.
- Device Management Challenges: Managing many devices across a sprawling campus adds another layer of complexity. Schools must ensure all devices are properly integrated and synchronized to work together seamlessly. This is particularly challenging during emergencies when every second counts, and quick, reliable message delivery is crucial.
The bottom line is clear: campuses need a user-friendly, comprehensive, and efficient communication system to keep everyone safe and well-informed, especially when it matters most. And a device broadcasting system checks all of these boxes.
Promoting Campus Safety and Security with Device Broadcasting
No matter the safety initiative—whether tackling crime concerns, organizing safety drills, or coordinating emergency responses—effective communication across the campus is crucial. Centralized device management tools offer a streamlined solution. Take ViewSonic myViewBoard Manager, for example. Preinstalled on ViewSonic interactive whiteboards for education with an integrated OS and the ViewBoard Box, which connects to any brand of existing campus displays, it offers an easy-to-use, web-based device management platform. This simplifies the control of campus displays, allowing you to send security updates, alerts, and safety procedures wirelessly across the campus with just a click.
Let’s explore how this device broadcasting technology can boost the effectiveness of three crucial campus security strategies:
1. Implement Emergency Response Infrastructure
Ensuring the safety of students, faculty, and staff during emergencies requires a robust technological setup. This includes having emergency alert apps for real-time updates and instructions, access control systems to manage who enters campus buildings, and mass notification systems to quickly spread important information. Now, what if you could transform your existing campus displays into a powerful Mass Notification System? By linking your device management platform with a Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) service, you can do just that. CAP is an international standard that simplifies the exchange of emergency alerts and public warnings, ensuring compatibility across various alerting technologies.
Connecting your centralized device broadcasting management system with a CAP platform like InformaCast, CrisisGo, or Alertus allows your campus displays to receive automated local emergency alerts. During emergencies near your school, your campus displays will instantly show updates and instructions for severe weather, disasters, and other critical situations from the CAP service. For instance, if a severe weather alert is issued, a device management platform like ViewSonic Manager linked to a CAP service will flash alerts across campus displays in no time. This warns everyone about the danger and provides instructions to seek shelter or evacuate, all updated in real-time.
This CAP messaging integration ensures that alerts reach the right people at the right time, reducing unnecessary stress and directing help where it’s needed most. In those critical moments where every second counts, this rapid communication helps students and staff take swift action, potentially saving lives.
2. Conduct Regular Safety and Evacuation Training
Regular safety drills are essential for preparing everyone on-campus for fire evacuations, lockdowns, severe weather events and other emergencies. By familiarizing the campus community with emergency procedures and ensuring that everyone knows their roles and responsibilities, these drills:
- Build confidence and help reduce panic during actual emergencies.
- Equip students with essential life-saving skills.
- Allow school management to test, evaluate, and refine their emergency response strategies.
Now, imagine how much more efficient and effective these drills could be with a centralized device broadcasting management system. These systems enhance communication and coordination by providing real-time updates, instructions, and reminders. For example, during a fire drill, information about emergency exits and regrouping points can be instantly shared on network displays.
A good, centralized device broadcasting management solution allows IT administrators to group campus devices and send specific content to different display subgroups. This means animated graphics showing the best evacuation routes, videos demonstrating correct actions during a fire, or audio announcements reinforcing key instructions—all tailored to each location. Plus, the CAP messaging integration mentioned earlier works with these subgrouped displays, allowing IT administrators to set different CAP URLs for each group. By delivering the right information to the right place, each display can guide students through the school more effectively, reducing confusion and delays. Admin can also further enhance safety measures by scheduling regular safety notice broadcasts at set times, like during nighttime. They can also send on-demand notifications to update everyone on any changes in emergency procedures, keeping everyone informed with the latest safety information.
3. Enhance Accessibility and Awareness of Support Services
City campuses often dominate safety discussions due to urban dangers, but rural campuses face unique challenges too. To address these issues, schools are offering comprehensive support services. They began by collaborating with local law enforcement, conducting patrols, and providing secure transportation. Now, their efforts have expanded to tackle issues like sexual assault prevention, substance abuse awareness, and harassment prevention. Additionally, schools are offering counseling, therapy, workshops, and support groups to help students succeed academically and personally.
Spreading the word about these services can be challenging. That’s where centralized device broadcasting management solutions with multimedia playlist functions come into play with easy digital signage. These tools turn network displays into vibrant digital noticeboards, perfect for sharing photos, videos, music, text, and webpages across campus. Notices can also be scheduled to appear more frequently at specific times, like increasing campus patrol messages at night on college campuses to ensure students get the right information when they need it most.
You can also expand access to support with digital notices. This approach offers practical benefits that enhance student engagement with support services. Adding QR codes to digital notices allows students to access detailed information or sign up for workshops and support groups directly from their phones. Schools can also livestream mental well-being workshops and seminars across campus digital displays, making them more accessible. The main advantage is the consistent, up-to-date information on all campus displays, integrated into daily campus life, making it easier for students to access the support services they need.
Summing It All Up
In educational settings, using advanced communication technology is a powerful way to create a culture of shared safety. While overcoming hurdles in campus communication can be challenging, utilizing tools like ViewSonic’s myViewBoard Manager can help ease the burden. This platform centralizes the management of any school, district, or campus’ displays, and seamlessly integrates with existing technology and adapts as your institution’s infrastructure evolves. With its intuitive interface, remote control capabilities, and automation features, ViewSonic myViewBoard Manager helps keep your students, teachers, and campus secure and prepared for any situation, all while cutting down on manpower needs, optimizing costs, and reducing administrative efforts.
To learn more about how you can transform your school’s safety protocols with myViewBoard Manager centralized device broadcasting management solution, to schedule a complimentary demo of myViewBoard Manager, or to request pricing, contact the team at Parmetech! As an Elite ViewSonic Partner we are happy to help. You can give us a call at (800) 727-6383, send us an email to info@parmetech.com, or submit a request through our website form.
(From the editor: Parts of this article were originally published on ViewSonic Library.)
