Chalk it up to ingenuity
With whiteboards and smartboards and Power Point displays, is there a place in education for the lowly piece of chalk?
Yes, says Robin Kaler, associate chancellor for public affairs at the University of Illinois. That was her, dressed in a suit and heels, crouched down on the campus Quad in Urbana clutching a piece of purple chalk, according to The Chicago Tribune.
To get more students signed up for the university’s new high-tech emergency communication system, she used the chalk to scrawl this message on the sidewalk: “Sign up now!!! emergency.illinois.edu.”
It seems that students don’t always pay attention to official mailings and postings in their residence halls, so Kaler and others grabbed a bucket of chalk Monday and took to the streets.
The University of Illinois is one of many colleges and universities that worked to boost campus security in the aftermath of the tragic shootings last spring at Virginia Tech. Many of those efforts have focused on high-tech emergency warning systems that alert students and staff through voice mail, email and text messaging.
The chalk campaign appears to have been effective. Between noon and 4 p.m. Monday, 203 students, faculty and staff signed up, compared with the 50 a day the program had been averaging. That brought the total to 2,680. The school wants at least 50 percent of the 60,000-plus community members registered.
Still, the chalk messages have a downside. Later Monday afternoon, rains came and erased the messages.
