School violence regularly occupies news headlines, turning students into activists as they demand gun control and call on lawmakers and education stakeholders to drastically improve school safety.
This disturbing trend, including the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and the March 20 shooting at Great Mills High School in Great Mills, Md., has prompted many districts to turn to technology solutions to put an extra layer of safety measures in schools.
Tools that monitor social media for threats, anonymous reporting systems, and databases to track and identify potentially preventable patterns among shootings are growing in popularity as educators recognize the importance of technology in preventing school violence.
“We have so much advancement in technologies, and we protect a lot of our prized assets, but we don’t do much to protect our students,” says Rob Bridges, president at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis. “We’re still kind of protecting them the old-fashioned way. After the Parkland shooting, I said there has to be more we can do than just lock ourselves in our classrooms and hope for the best.”
That’s when Bridges began communicating with DMI, a mobility solutions provider launching EndZone for Education, a mobile app and platform for real-time response management in the event of a security incident.