Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

How to save lives with social media

Campus emergency expert discusses the importance of social media, text messaging

social-media-campusThe night before Byron Piatt was scheduled to speak about campus emergencies at the 2014 ACUTA conference in Dallas, Texas, his campus was experiencing an emergency of its own.

Protestors clashed with Albuquerque police on March 30 following days of demonstrations over a series of deadly police shootings. The University of New Mexico, where Piatt works as an emergency manager, lies at the heart of the city, and the confrontation spilled onto campus.

At 9 p.m., the university’s Twitter account sent out a tweet to its 19,000 followers.…Read More

Campus emergency alerts, simplified

One emergency app tries to eliminate student confusion during a campus crisis

campus-emergency-appIt might take days for a college student to gather every piece of information on how to respond to a campus emergency–from assaults, to fires, to shootings and extreme weather.

Detailed on various college sites, brochures, and other campus literature, instructions for how to respond to an emergency are often scattered and disorganized, if not thorough.

That’s why colleges and universities have condensed their emergency notification and response protocol into a single, easy-to-use mobile app called In Case of Crisis, designed to serve as a sort of one-stop shop for students’ emergency needs (and instructions).…Read More