ATLANTA — East Coast Diversified Corporation (ECDC) announced that its subsidiary StudentConnect will launch SCAAP, its latest mobile application set to launch November 2012. SCAAP, which stands for “StudentConnect Advertising Aggregation Platform,” will allow national and local advertisers to sponsor real-time status updates and notifications to parents of students riding on school buses in transit to and from school on their mobile device.
“SCAAP offers a unique technology for parents and potential advertisers by providing a localized platform that would allow local businesses to focus on supporting schools in their respective communities,” said Kayode Aladesuyi, CEO of ECDC. “It will also provide opportunities for regional and national sponsors to support local school districts.”
ECDC conducted research study in local and national markets to determine areas of school transportation safety improvement. The majority of the findings showed significant concerns with student transportation services. Most parents expressed that knowing the exact status of his/her child en route to and from school has become a very critical and expressed concern for the growing number of incidents of younger students getting off at the wrong bus stop.
“Schools are grappling with this problem every day,” said Andrej Jeremic, ECDC Director Business Development and Marketing.
SCAAP’s technology was specifically designed to help parents and schools monitor this concern by providing each with a mobile platform to manage notification setting based on user preferences and as a targeted medium for advertisers to choose which notification they choose to sponsor. “Our technology is designed to allow both parents and advertisers to have a mutual interest in the communications process,” said Sathya Sundararajanm, ECDC’s senior development engineer.
The technology is designed for sponsors to have the capability to support targeted notifications to parents who have opted in to receive branded messages. Messaging will be sent to users based on those who have expressed interest in receiving sponsored messages about the child’s transportation status. ECDC is in ongoing discussions with school districts across the country to implement strict screening process for advertisers that can participate in the program.
“This is a ‘opt in’ program for parents and is not a requirement, our research showed more than 90% of parent will choose to participate in the program,” said Jeremic. “We do not collect nor share any proprietary student information with third parties. It truly is a win-win situation for both parents and schools with no added costs associated to acquiring the technology and advertisers reaching their target audience while providing critical community service,” he said.
StudentConnect has been in discussion with several school districts across the country since 2011 and are aware of the growing problem of students getting off at wrong stops or failing to get off. “It is a serious concern on most school transportation agenda,” said Aladesuyi. “We realize that budgetary concerns remain a challenge to implementing appropriate technology like StudentConnect to address the issue. StudentConnect will make the technology available to school districts nationwide at no cost and provides a strong mobile advertisement platform for businesses,” Aladesuyi continued.
StudentConnect is currently working with a local school district in metro Atlanta for full implementation of the technology. We are preparing to launch SCAAP initiative with schools, parents and advertisers in preparation of the official launch of StudentConnect in November. For more information visit: www.StudentConnect.us for a copy of the market Research information, visit: http://www.studentconnect.us/research.html
About East Coast Diversified Corporation
East Coast Diversified Corporation is a holding corporation with a diversified group of technology companies. Its business portfolio includes businesses offering technology for logistics and asset management, media entertainment technology, transportation safety and class attendance monitoring system and social media applications.
StudentConnect is a school transportation technology which utilizes our proprietary wireless communication between GPS and RFID to provide transportation safety and class attendance monitoring solutions to schools.
