It’s important for educational institutions such as schools, colleges and universities to continuously improve and prioritize safety and security for staff, support teams, parents, visitors and of course the students.
The day-to-day operations on school premises also need to be effectively maintained to ensure schools and universities meet quality and efficiency standards. The future and sustainability of schools will depend on leveraging innovation and technology to boost their reputation, attract and retain students and employ a high caliber of teaching staff.
Tait is harnessing its two-way radio solutions and communications expertise in this sector to ensure safer education experiences through its portfolio of DMR solutions. Today’s students are expecting safe, connected experiences and spaces.
Reliable communication is essential for universities and other schools to respond to emergency situations instantly. Tait provides a range of affordable and reliable two-way radios for meeting and exceeding the many demands and requirements for the operational and safety goals of schools.
Two-way radios can be deployed in a number of scenarios which enable more efficient and safer outcomes and response times:
- School trips and events.
- Parking management
- Student and visitor escorting on or off site
- Emergency evacuations.
- Risk and incident management.
- Reporting crimes.
- Operational Management of campus restaurants, retail shops, tours, housing and accommodation, and enrollment queues.
Tait’s TP2 and TP3 DMR range of portable radios was designed with features that are ‘best in class’.
1) Personalize to meet your requirements
The TP3 is a unique portable radio, highly flexible and easily personalized in several ways. Available in DMR Tier 2 and analog, it puts the power to choose the color, display, keypad, and labels for each radio in your hands. The TP3 offers a variety of ways to show off your school's brand through matching color covers and custom labels. Schools can print labels that have the name of the owner of the radio, or the talk group it belongs to. The color splash screen can also be modified so every time a user turns on the radio they will be greeted by the school logo, or any other message/image.
2) Enhanced security and safety
Tait radios are built to work in emergency situations. They’re rugged and reliable and allow users to communicate instantly. Should there ever be a violent incident at the school for instance, you don’t want to be looking down at your phone to unlock it, find the right contact, and then try to make the call. With a two-way radio it is quick and easy to press a single button to be connected instantly to alert the rest of your team and to call for help.
Simplex communication allows for you to communicate with other faculty members, even when the communication network or power has gone down. Each radio can speak to the other radios close by, so you’re not reliant on a cellular network to remain stable during an emergency.
Several safety features are also available. For instance, the TP3 and the TP2 include man down alerts – should someone on your team fall or collapse, you’ll receive an emergency alert. The TP3 offers GPS functionality which also allows you to monitor everyone’s location and vibration alerts help ensure that users do not miss calls.
Tait DMR Tier 2 radios are the reliable communications solutions in emergency situations, mitigating serious ramifications for those impacted on site, alongside your school’s overall reputation.
3) Improved Efficiency
The Tait TP2 DMR Tier 2 portable radio combines affordability with operational simplicity, making it the best investment for increasing communication and collaboration within mobile work teams. Radios keep schools operating at an efficient pace. The TP2 provides instant connectivity between teachers, commercial administrators, maintenance staff, event coordinators, faculty officers, and anyone else who needs to be connected. For sites such as universities which operate from early morning until night, the TP2 will provide continuous connection for up to 15hrs shifts.
Need to notify the facilities team that there is a clean-up required in the restroom? It’s much easier to press a single button than to walk across the school, only to find they aren’t in their office.
If you choose to take advantage of location services, you can create even more efficiencies with the TP3350 which supports GPS. Need to call for someone from the first aid office? Use the GPS data to see who is closest. Need to know where a school bus is? Check with your location services application.
4) A Sustainable Investment
With the TP3, you can protect your investment today by choosing a radio that is flexible and ready to meet your changing needs of the future. To save on costs, schools can purchase radios without a color screen, and if the school needs to expand its usage later and may need more keys and a screen to select channels, that change is easy with the TP3. You simply work with your local dealer to apply new covers, and you can go from a no-key, no-display radio to a 4-key or 16-key radio with display for example.
Each model offers maximum flexibility in its ability to change covers, meaning you can purchase the lowest cost option and change it later. The TP3 is also an affordable radio that doesn't cut corners on quality. Every TP3 is built with IP67 water and dust protection, and endless options for personalization.
5) Open Standards
Tait has a philosophy to make radios that adhere to open standards. What does this mean for your school? It means that if you buy Tait today, you will have the flexibility to diversify and change your radios in the future. Tait radios will work with other radios and communication devices that follow open standards. You can connect Tait radios with applications like voice recorders, online management tools, or dispatch.
While some vendors try to lock-you-in to their offering by selling features on radios that don’t work with others, you won’t fall into that trap with Tait. At Tait we simply believe that customers deserve the right to choose what’s best for them, that’s why Tait keeps on innovating.
6) Going beyond with an entire communications solution
While a TP2 or TP3 radio alone may be enough for some smaller schools, others will require a full communications solution. Fortunately, Tait can design and deliver everything you need.
If you need a base station (also known as a repeater) to create a network, we’ve got the Tait TB7300. Need some mobile radios to place in your school buses? We have the Tait TM9300 and TAIT AXIOM Mobiles.
All this hardware unlocks many new applications for schools as well. For instance, a custom TAIT AXIOM Mobile application allows school buses to automatically track when and where they make each stop. This way, if a parent or student claims the bus never came for them, the school has a record of the bus’s journey time and place.
Another great application for schools is Tait TeamPTT. This smartphone application connects people to their radio network, via the internet and an app on their phone. You may not be able to give every teacher a radio, but what if every teacher had the Tait TeamPTT app on their existing cellular device? They could make calls, hear alerts, view the location of other users, and stay much more connected to administration during regular operating hours and emergencies.
7) Value for Money
Funding is sometimes going to be a challenge to implement communications for schools so school financiers need to be conscious of spending their budgets wisely, getting the best value they can. On paper, some of the low-cost solutions out there may seem appropriate. However more often than not, they turn out to be a false economy, resulting in poor performance and a route to unforeseen risks and dangers.
The Tait TP2 and TP3 range comes with high-quality features, is reliable and durable, and offers you flexibility, all for a very affordable price. This value-packed portable is an obvious choice for your school communications.
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