With the majority of high school and college students communicating on social media, many of them in some type of distress, Social Sentinel has developed software that can monitor social media and receive alerts about comments, threats, or conversations that cause concern.  Steven Healy and Gary Margolis, partners of a campus security firm based in Burlington, Vermont, have created Social Sentinel, a program that uses an algorithm to scan students’ public social media posts for red-flag words like “bomb” or phrases like, “I can’t take it anymore.” However, it’s only one half of a two-part prevention strategy, as there still needs to be an administrator on the other side of the screen reading the posts and evaluating the severity, Healy said. Social Sentinel monitors and sends alerts of potential threats to officials who can then respond appropriately.  To read the coverage, click here:  Should Online School Threats Be Taken More Seriously?