Mobile Phones Designed To Enhance Student Safety

Mobile Phones Designed To Enhance Student Safety by Wendy Mitchell

Increasingly, safety "goes to the head of the class" when it comes to ranking the factors that guide a student's college selection.

With some 500,000 crimes reported each year on U.S. college campuses, it's no wonder students and parents alike are concerned about the issue.

University administrators are equally concerned, with many turning toward innovative technologies to enhance campus safety.

For example, there's a new GPS-based mobile phone application called Rave Guardian that enables students to share their location with campus police when they feel unsafe.

It does this by providing the option to students to be monitored by campus police on- or off-campus for an amount of time that they designate, using the same GPS technologies as the nation's E911 service.

If the timer expires before the student turns Guardian off, an alert and pertinent information--including student's location and photo--are sent to campus police indicating there's a potential problem.

Rave Guardian, a one-of-its-kind mobile phone application, is the winner of the Clery Award from Security on Campus and is just one of the many mobile phone applications offered by Rave Wireless that keep students connected and safe.

The company also offers a service called Rave Alert, which enables a university to broadcast time-sensitive text alert messages to thousands of students and faculty on- or off-campus in real time.

Many believe that mobile text messages are the fastest and most reliable way to communicate immediately with a large number of people in an emergency. In the case of campus security, messages could range from a notice about severe weather to a warning about a bomb threat.

Rave's mobile technology is also being used at colleges to build campus communities. Students using phones with the applications have the ability to monitor campus transportation using GPS; participate in class polls; create and join social groups; get class and assignment updates from course systems; and do "American Idol"-like real-time voting at student events.

To learn more, visit the Web site at ravewireless.com.

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