A lockdown or an evacuation on every classroom screen at once, with one button for a teacher who needs colleagues in the room: what the whoot. Alerts app shows on a Windows PC, a Mac or a Chromebook, and what it records.
A phone in a pocket is not where a teacher looks when a lesson is running. The whoot. Alerts app puts an emergency alert on the computer at the front of the room, full screen on every display, the moment it is declared, and gives the teacher one thing to press: Get help. It does nothing else. It is never a chat, never a camera, and it raises nothing but Get help.
The app runs on Windows PCs, Macs and Chromebooks and the three behave the same. Your IT team installs it through your MDM with a key from the dashboard (see Installing Desktop Alerts); nobody signs in to it, and the staff who use it never see a whoot. account.
The alert takes every screen of the computer: the scenario's name in large letters, what to do now as numbered steps, where it applies and when it was declared. A real alert is red; a drill or a test is amber and says so. The alarm sounds until somebody acknowledges it, for three minutes at most, at a volume the app raises for the alarm and puts back afterwards; a scenario can be set to a chime or to silence instead (a lockdown is silent, so that nothing tells an intruder a room is occupied).
On a responder's computer a Get help alert offers On my way beside Acknowledge, and the teacher who pressed Get help sees that somebody is coming.
Get help is in the app's menu (the tray on Windows, the menu bar on a Mac, the toolbar on a Chromebook) and in a window that opens from it. Hold to send for a second and a half; letting go early sends nothing. Or press the shortcut three times (Ctrl+Alt+H on Windows, Control-Shift-H on a Mac, Ctrl+Shift+H on a Chromebook): that sends with nothing on screen, for a room where a visible alert would make things worse.
The press reaches the responders' phones and computers as an alert named after the room: Help needed — Science block, Room 12. The window shows Sent with the time, Seen by once a responder has acknowledged, who is on the way, and, if nobody has answered within your escalation time, that it went to more staff. If the computer cannot reach whoot. the press keeps trying for ten minutes and the window says Not sent: use your phone or the nearest alarm. Sent by mistake? tells the responders straight away.
Once the press has gone, the window may ask What's happening?: First aid, Behaviour, Extra adult or Unknown adult. It is optional, it never delays the request, and it tells the responders what to bring: their alert reads First aid — Science block, Room 12. You can change the answer. The school chooses whether the question is asked, and which needs, on the Get Help tab.
A notice is a routine message from the office to staff computers: Fire alarm test at 14:00, Staff briefing moved to the library. It is not an alert. It arrives as a small card at the top of the teacher's own screen with a chime at the computer's usual volume, never the alarm, and Got it is its only button. Notices stay listed in the app's menu until they expire or the office withdraws them.
A notice never shows while an alert is on screen, never on the lock screen, and never on a screen a class can see. The office sees how many computers showed it and how many pressed Got it, and nobody is named.
A classroom computer is often mirrored to a projector or a board. Each scenario chooses its display: full shows the alert on every screen; discreet on shared screens shows the full alert on the teacher's own screen and a code phrase card (Mr Stone is in reception) on any screen others can see; discreet everywhere shows the code phrase on every screen, with Show details to open the alert on that screen alone. The app works out which screens are the computer's own from the display set-up, and treats any screen it cannot be sure about as shared.
The alert surfaces are kept out of screen sharing and recording on Windows and ChromeOS. On a Mac this is best effort: some capture tools do not honour it, so discreet display is what keeps an alert off a shared Mac screen.
A school can name a staff group in the app's policy. A person signed in who is in the group sees everything above. A person outside it, a pupil at a shared computer or a visitor, sees the code phrase card or nothing at all, as the school chooses, has no Get help, no Recent alerts and no notices, and is never named. If the computer cannot check the group it treats the person as staff and tells the school in its health report, so an alert is never withheld by a directory fault.
A locked Windows PC still shows the alert above the lock screen, with the way to the sign-in in place of the buttons, and a lock-screen notification; a locked Mac shows a notification and the alert itself at the unlock. The alert is counted as displayed only once somebody could see it. A computer that is asleep shows nothing until it wakes: keep alert computers from idle sleep while they are on mains power, which Installing Desktop Alerts covers.
The app sends the school a receipt when an alert was delivered, when it was on a screen somebody could see, when it was acknowledged and what status was given, and a Get help press with its time and the need chosen. Acknowledging, replying, On my way and Get help name the account signed in to the computer; delivery, display and everything about a notice name nobody. The app takes no screenshots, reads no documents or browsing, records no sound and tracks no position. Its own logs never hold a notice's words or the time a screen was locked or unlocked.