For parents and their children, it was the worst problem. Children at Winder, Georgia’s Apalachee High School took out their mobile phones and texted heartbreaking emails to their kids about an active shooter at the university as a gunman roamed the rooms. They bid their loved ones their final farewells, believing they would pass away.
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In case of an emergency, parents want their child to have a mobile phone at school, according to a National Parents Union study conducted in February.
Despite what the media would have us believe, school murders are very uncommon. And in fact, according to many experts, children who use devices may be in greater risk in an emergency.
National School Safety and Security Services leader, Ken Trump, points out the real-world negative effects of using apps with children in an effective shooter condition or other disaster.
If 20 students are in a school and are texting, calling parents, or live-streaming, they are not paying enough attention to the people ‘ instructions and not being completely aware of what they might need to do to keep their lives, he said. ” You have hours to follow instructions and move sites”.
Phones can produce various dangers also, he said. Their fluttering or ringing may annoy students who are attempting to hide in classrooms. Calls made to 911 or home at the same time by students is overwhelm mobile networks or the emergency response program. Additionally, having parents rush to school to test their child after receiving an alarming text was obstruct traffic, preventing emergency personnel from entering or leaving.
According to Trump,” Kids are going to come to the school anyway, but phones expedite that flocking to the university,” referring to phones as more of” an emotional security blanket for parents” than anything that really makes children safer.
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Is there a substitute for allowing kids to bring cell phones in class just in case of an active shooter incident or other disaster? In reality, there is.
Just days prior to the shooting, Apalachee High School installed a new call program. A system the size of an ID symbol is included in the CrisisAlert system, which Centegix created. The symbol has a box that, when pressed, notifies school officials and first rescuers of an incident.
The company collaborates with law enforcement organizations and school districts to integrate the program into their present safety processes and manage everything at all possible.
According to Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith, the class had been using the system for less than a week and had only tested it the day before the shooting.
He called the timing,” God’s action”.
Nine people were hurt in the firing on Wednesday, including two pupils and two teachers. Experts and law enforcement officials say this latest horror highlights the potential role systems can play in reducing police response times and possibly preventing further violence as the country reels from yet another dangerous school shooting, the 45th in the country so far this year.
Given the uncommonness of school murders, it is not a good idea to allow apps in school so that students can visit home in the event of a shooting.
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The children ‘ are so used to watching calamities on their devices that their first reaction is to archive it rather than run away from it.
” We while a nation have not done a very good work of actually fighting against that idea and saying to kids,’ You move away from the danger,’ whether it’s a tornado, a violent dog, a fight, whatever it is”, she said. Our culture dictates that you “run toward it and you film it”
Up until the early 21st century, American schoolchildren managed to get along fairly well until the phone turned into an appendage rather than a technological device. Is the possibility of an active shooter situation at school a sufficient excuse for the distractions that prevent educators from instructing students?
The harm they cause far outweigh the marginal benefits of using phones in schools for emergencies.
