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Wisconsin High School Gets 'Help Alert'Each staff member carries a ZigBee-based active RFID tag with a button that can be pressed to notify administrators of an emergency, and to indicate where help is needed.
Jun 10, 2010—Teachers at Shorewood High School, near Milwaukee, are making use of an added security layer in their classrooms and hallways, thanks to a system known as Help Alert, provided by RF Technologies. Staff members are issued RFID-enabled pendants worn on lanyards or carried in pockets, and can call for help merely by pressing a button on one of the devices. Since the system was installed, the administration reports, it has been used in one emergency event, alerting the school's assistant principal when a fight between two students erupted in a class room, and enabling him to respond in time to break up the altercation.
The Help Alert system operates over either an existing Wi-Fi network, or a mesh network of Help Alert readers (which the company calls "routers") complying with the ZigBee IEEE 802.15.2 protocol, according to David Bussa, the global solutions director of RF Technologies' Pinpoint division, which includes the Help Alert system. Because Shorewood High School has no Wi-Fi system in place, it selected the ZigBee-based option. The school completed a beta test of the system in several buildings, and is now awaiting a federal grant to fund the installation's expansion. 
The Help Alert pendant contains a Wi-Fi- or ZigBee-based RFID tag, and features a red button that users can press to summon assistance.
"We are fortunate to have had very few emergency incidents," says Tim Kenney, the school district's director of safety and the high school's former assistant principal. However, he adds, the nature of the campus makes a wireless system a good idea, since there is no way, with the open campus, to lock down the entire school in the event of an emergency. The classrooms include phones that teachers can use to reach the front office during an emergency, but that requires more time to place the call, and the phone lines may be busy, which often occurs when several staff members in the office make calls simultaneously. For that reason, Kenney says he "thought this system would be very appropriate for Shorewood High School." The system has been installed in three of the buildings, with plans to eventually deploy the technology in all five. In late 2008, RF Technologies began the process of installing and testing the system to ensure the routers were reading the tags and forwarding data properly to gateways and, ultimately, to the back-end software. Additional power outlets in the halls had to be installed in order to accommodate some of the readers, which delayed the RFID system's installation. Initially, a handful of employees carried the tags and tested them throughout the buildings as the system was being installed. The wireless tracking system went live in February of this year, with a total of 90 routers covering 180,000 square feet of the campus. Login and post your comment!Not a member? Signup for an account now to access all of the features of RFIDJournal.com! |
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