Technology at Colleges/Universities:
Are Twitter Alerts for Security Issues only?
Students across the country are able to follow the safety and security departments at their schools of higher learning simply by following the departments on twitter. Colleges and universities signed their safety and security departments up for twitter accounts after shootings on U.S. campuses led to student injuries and deaths. Students that sign up to follow their school on twitter can be instantly notified of a dangerous person or situation on campus. This twitter capability can then be used to direct students and faculty of counter measures to take to help ensure the safety of the people on campus. This is a great use of technology.
I would like to see campus twitter capabilities take the next step. The health care office on campus could send out health alerts by twitter to student and faculty subscribers. Followers would be notified of a meningitis outbreak or a flu outbreak on campus. Immunization clinic alerts could be sent out to followers so students and faculty would have the knowledge at the touch of a fingertip of where and when they can get a seasonal flu shot. Such information is not a top ten on most people’s search engine list, so these health alerts would bring health issues to light.
Health tweets could be used at holidays and semester breaks to link followers with up to the minute health alerts for popular vacation spots and commercial transportation systems. Links could be offered for health practices for disease prevention during travel and vacation. These links would need to exclude advertisements.
Today’s students and faculty not only have to consider the possibilities of violent campus death plots, but also need to keep in mind the silent, stealthy, unseen predators known as bacterial meningitis and community acquired MRSA (just to name two). This twitter capability would inform student families that may be in a different location of health concerns on campus. Campus population would be encouraged to maintain better health with the use of health twitter alerts.
