August 2, 2019
As a startup company in Tampa Bay, we find ourselves being so caught up in the everyday business work. Sales, marketing, technology updates and customer service is how we spend our days. It is times like this that stop and remind us why we work so hard.
Across the country, there have been eight school related shootings already this year. Last week STEM School Highlands Ranch shooting in Colorado which resulted in 7 injured and 1 fatality. This is a school we know was committed to school safety from personal interactions with leadership, which hit close to home.
Our team is devastated by these terrible tragedies that are repeating themselves and as a result, children are scared, parents are terrified and teachers are feeling an immense sense of responsibility and constantly stressing “what if” scenarios.
Prevention, reaction, and protection are three areas that our system uses with schools. Our dismissal system provides an efficient and safe daily dismissal technology to the school. While Kid.io provides schools with an overall safety system.
Prevention: Often after these shootings, we learn there had been multiple warning signs. These students talking about shooting the school or acting in other ways of violence. Which a lot of times students don’t take too seriously, or do not know how to react due to the possibility of getting someone in trouble, being afraid of the student or not knowing who to talk to about it. Our Anonymous Tip Line offers a solely safe space for these types of behaviors to be reported without the stress of being identified. The entire purpose of this platform is to ensure that every “joke”, overheard conversation and suspicious activity can be safely reported and dealt with appropriately.
Reaction: Our system is a technology-based solution. Every teacher has a cellphone, which in this case is their tool. This is due to our Panic Button. Alert first responders even if the situation restricts verbal communication. The Panic Button offers an easily accessible way to report ANY emergency to the authorities immediately. Not only the appropriate authorities but fellow co-workers and parents as well. The Panic Button includes a silent alarm that alarms everyone with the app without the loud alarms and dangerous panic that can ensue. This includes multi-channel communication. When an emergency is reported, contacts will automatically receive text messages and phone calls.
Protection: Location services allow schools and emergency services to know the exact location where assistance is needed. In an emergency, time is everything. By our technology offering this service, it eliminates the time it takes for someone to call the authorities by being able to just use the app, and the authorities being immediately given location services to know exactly how to assist the emergency at hand. This also allows staff and students to avoid these areas and know where to go to have a safe space or evacuate safely.
We strive to provide safety solutions for schools. PikMyKid team consists of parents, educators and industry thought leaders who see and believe in this system wholeheartedly. We live in a generation where technology is at the forefront of everything we do. We should be leveraging technology to create appropriate safety solutions. PikMyKid and Kidio do precisely that- Leveraging the power of innovative technologies to provide cost-effective safety solutions to schools.
Guest Blogger:
Emily Markham
PikMyKid’s Marketing Director
Emily@Pikmykid.com
Want to Guest Blog for us?
Email stephanie@myschooldance.com!
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