Monday, December 10, 2007

Getting the word

As you may have noticed, Siena is now offering E2campus as an emergency notification system.

E2campus lets you sign up for text messages via your cell phone. If there's an emergency, you will get instant notification that there's a problem.

I did much of the research into this sort of notification. It's become a big area after the Virginia Tech shootings, and colleges are trying to find ways to get the message out that works better than e-mail. Since students are becoming more used to texting, that's the way that most systems go. It's certainly a better method of notification than e-mail, since most people carry their cell phones with them even when they may not be near a computer.

You need to create an account to be notified. Siena will not be sending a lot of messages (with luck, we'll never need it). But it's important to sign up to make sure you aren't missed.

If you have questions about how the system works, contact Sandy Serbalik.