Emergency Contact Elert

The year 2010 marks the start of something special for schools in Australia – streamlined, simple communications. Emergency Contact is the first of its kind in the education sector, offering schools and other organisations the tools to easily contact 100’s or thousands of people on their home phone, mobile phone or email. Better still, it returns the results from each call to let you know who heard your message, and who didn’t.

Parents receive the voice call notification.

I have been very excited to see the take up of this new type of communications tool for the education sector, as it is a HUGE step forward for school’s methods of contacting parents. Willmott Park Primary School  and Laurimar Primary School have been especially instrumental in the early stages of Emergency Contact, and we’d like to say a big thank you to both of them for their support. Today I will touch briefly on Willmott Park’s use of the notification platform.

At the beginning of the year I was contacted by Willmott Park, who were looking for a product that would allow them to easily contact all of the parents in the school at a moments notice. The Principal, Evan Hughes, says he “researched many products on the market and found this one to be the most comprehensive & suitable to school needs.

“I was prompted to investigate such a system after hearing the news reports from the school that had a collapsed ceiling in a classroom, I thought, ‘if such a communication system was in place then parents fears and many hours would be saved in an instant’.” And he’s right. Schools are instantly able to set the parents fears aside when they receive a timely, informative notification from the school. It also saves on administration staff taking phone call after phone call explaining the situation again and again.

They were able to use it recently to notify parents of year 5 and 6 students that their bus would be returning late from an excursion. ”This almost eliminated the usual phone calls to the office by parents about when the busses will arrive – saving much office time.”

While informing parents and keeping them updated on school activities is important, so is reducing the schools administration costs, and the time spent on coordinating students and parents, which can be both easily achieved with notification platforms.

“It has been the best innovation for our school as an additional emergency response for schools, and the parents love it!” Says Evan Hughes.

Welcome to the all new Emergency Contact blog, entitled ‘Elert’. My name is Samuel Stacey and I will delve into effective communication practices for schools, community groups, sports clubs and businesses. Follow us on our blog to discover and learn more about the world of instant notifications, emergency alerts, and streamlined communication services. In the coming days I will provide a case study of Willmott Park Primary School in Victoria, and how they have successfully implemented the Emergency Contact notification platform to keep the parents and staff members in their school updated.

Moving forward from that I will keep you updated with industry specific news and important Emergency Contact updates.

I welcome comments and discussions, and look forward to hearing from you, our visitors and clients. We aim to improve our services constantly and are working hard to make your communications simple and easy.

Don’t forget to check back often, and you can be notified when we post new blog posts by clicking on our RSS feed. Alternatively, follow us on Twitter (link to the right) to be sent tweets when there is a new post to read.

Brisbane schools have been jolted this week after the largest rainfall in 17 years hit the south east corner of the state causing flash floods, emphasizing the necessity for an instant emergency alerting system.

Principals and staff from many schools in Brisbane were frantically contacting parents in the early hours of Thursday morning to inform of changes in the school timetable due to floods restricting access to campuses.

School staff members contacting even a small student body of 300 students can take hours calling each individual household.

The OnCall Messaging online command centre provides easy access to voice broadcast and SMS alerts, which are as effortless to send as sending emails, and they are all distributed instantly.

“One of the things that we find difficult to manage are all the incoming queries from concerned parents. So this takes care of that for us,” says Dave Greig, Principal of Our Lady of the Rosary

“Schools are responsible for the safety of these children, and any measures they can take to improve their safety and well-being should be taken,” commented Michael Coates, Managing Director of OnCall Messaging.

“For a dollar a day, schools can instantly inform parents of critical updates about school crisis’, which is small cost for such a large benefit for parent’s peace of mind and the safety of their children.”