December 2005 — Features
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VoIP to the Rescue
Productivity Train
Some schools install VoIP to cut down on longdistance costs. At Saugus
Union School District (SUSD) in Santa Clarita, CA, however, technology
offi- cials recently turned to the technology for other reasons— to increase
productivity and flexibility across the board. SUSD dived into VoIP in earnest
back in 2003, with an implementation of 15 call managers and more than 700 phones
from 3Com (www.3com.com).
Once connected to the school district’s WAN, the phones provided instantaneous
communication between 14 schools and a maintenance facility, all with the push
of a three-digit extension. The price tag: $5 million, most of which was financed
by a public bond. SUSD saved money on the implementation by installing almost
all of the phones with in-house technicians. Once the installation was complete,
Jim Klein, director of Information Services, had his staff conduct training
sessions with teachers and staff members to make sure everyone knew how to use
the new system. Klein says the response to this hand-holding was overwhelmingly
positive; within days, teachers and other users were raving about the ability
to get voicemail delivered to their e-mail accounts, and were customizing other
features on their phones such as automatic dial, call forwarding, and intercom
calling.
“Our primary interest was the ease of configuration,” says Klein. “It was a night-and-day difference from our old [PBX-based] system in terms of manageability, and that’s something that really resonated with our teachers and other users.”
Surprisingly, one of the biggest challenges for SUSD was the heat generated by all of the new equipment. As Klein explains it, call managers who made up the heart of the new system required power switches, and those call managers required backup batteries in the event of a power outage. All of these items made the server room pretty hot, and the district was forced to invest in heavy-duty air conditioning units to keep the room cool and prevent meltdowns. Luckily, the district came in under budget on its initial purchases, so Klein was able to invest in portable air conditioners. With these units, the district was able to bring the overheating problem under control quickly.
Moving forward, Klein anticipates that his next big push will be to increase flexibility by expanding VoIP into the wireless arena. Already, SUSD has invested in high-bandwidth access points from 3Com to facilitate wireless childcare sites, and locations where people have to be mobile. When the district was building its newest school, Klein set up wireless VoIP phones in the office so staff members could work before the rest of the school was complete. Down the road, this approach could become the norm: He envisions a setup where teachers and staff members rely on wireless VoIP so colleagues or parents can reach them when they’re outside the classroom.
“Talk about flexibility: In my personal utopia, we’d have wireless handsets that use VoIP but also double as regular old cellular phones,” Klein says. “Could it happen? Maybe someday. But as of now, I’d say it’s a long way off.”
VOIP: WHAT IS IT? FOR THOSE WHO are not completely familiar with VoIP, the technology is a nearly instantaneous way of taking voice communications, breaking them down into tiny “packets,” and sending those packets alongside data over the Internet. Once this process occurs, the voice packets are treated like any other piece of data—e-mail,Web pages, or the text from an IM chat. Once the packets have reached their destination, they’re separated from the data and reassembled to form a real-time streaming audio file. While traditional calls require a separate circuit (or phone number) for each individual user, VoIP calls share space on the network with everything else and are routed according to an IP address. With VoIP, the same physical cable plant that is providing data access to classrooms also can be used to deploy phones. This saves on wiring costs and streamlines the maintenance of cabling systems. Similarly, a single logical system can be distributed across all school campuses and facilities. This eases system administration and management, and enables more efficient sharing of specialists, receptionists, and other human resources. Voicemail and other advanced telephony features then can be deployed to everyone at little or no incremental cost, greatly enhancing communication. And by putting a VoIP infrastructure in place, schools are also setting the stage for using multimedia in distance learning.
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Jacob Milner is a freelance writer who writes frequently on the subjects of technology and education.
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