Safety For All By zoink57 on - Updated Oct 15, 2011
This past fall, the high school that I work at installed the GE Security TOPAZ System to all of our outside doors. Our high school is in the city and consists of 3 buildings that our students travel between. Being one of the Main Office secretaries, I am on the front line of using this system everyday. It was decided that I was the lucky one to have the software installed on my computer.
The software takes a large amount of hard drive space, which wasn't taken under consideration before they installed it. So basically, until they upgraded my computer I could only open one application in addition to the security software.
The software is fairly easy to use. Each door is assigned its own time schedule to open and close to follow the schools' schedule. When we have a different schedule, each door needs to be changed to follow the new schedule. As of this time we have 6 doors that need to be maintained. One of the problems that we have encountered is when the school was on winter break, teachers were unable to access the building due to the system being set on "holiday" - which basically locked down the school for the entire break period. We have since resolve this issue.
The system has been an adjustment for everyone using it (faculty, parents and students), but overall I believe it is a change that needed to be made.
About The Author:
General Electric TOPAZ
This sounds great and I think more schools will start using things like this to keep our kids safe. Sad but a necessity now a days.
Sounds great, except for the large amount of space it takes up on the hard drive.
I think it's great that they were looking out for the school ans installed this system. Too bad they did not think it through before it messed up your computer. Glad you were able to fix that.
Security is important especially in schools. I am glad this is working for your school. Thanks for sharing your experience.
It's a shame that we have to be so concerned about our kids at school. Since we do, I'm glad there are precautions like this being taken.
I'm sad that society needs such safeguards nowadays, but I'm glad there are products out there to handle the job. This sounds like a good one.
Around about how much would you say this costs?
Informative and well written. thanks for sharing.
Thank you for sharing. Security is on everyones minds these days. What happens when the computer goes down? Glad to hear its working and keeping everyone safer.
I am glad to hear schools are starting to install systems like these. I do have to wonder like the other person in what happens when the computer goes down? Is everything locked down?