e2Campus Bundles Campus Emergency Safety Services
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 10/28/10
Omnilert, which develops notification service e2Campus, has bundled a number of existing and new safety offerings into the e2Campus 360 Safety Suite. The suite includes uENS, uTip, uConference, and uSafe.
uENS, the flagship, is an education-specific notification system that allows authorized staff to send custom or predefined messages to the campus community in multiple formats, via SMS text message, landline, computer desktop, e-mail, PA systems, digital signage, and other modes.
uConference is a new crisis collaboration service that allows school administrators to set up ad hoc secure outbound teleconference calls. The company said this service would be used during the initial minutes of an emergency before a community-wide alert is issued.
uSafe, a new mobile application that connects students and staff with campus police or school safety escorts, is planned for release in early 2011.
uTip lets people send crime tips anonymously to public safety officers or others via SMS text messages from a standard cell phone. No pre-registration is necessary.
"Leveraging mobile phones as emergency notification, response, and personal safety tools is very important and it's the future," said Sam Kennedy, assistant director of user services at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. The university is an e2Campus customer. "These new tools empower people to be part of the community, part of the solution. It's all about protecting people and making them feel safe and that's what e2Campus 360 does. I like how e2Campus uENS is a multimodal communication system and the 360 Safety Suite is a multidimensional communication system."
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.