5. Unified Messaging and Voice Over IP

Unified messaging is starting to gain momentum in the education market, among others. Episcopal School in Baton Rouge, La., is a private college-prep K-12 school that has been using a Captaris standard voicemail system. Teachers have been forced to cram into faculty lounges during class breaks for the chance to check their voicemail which, in addition to frustrating teachers, caused undue stress on the voicemail system during common break times. Many teachers had to wait until day's end to check their messages, resulting in delayed responses to parents and colleagues.

The school wanted to build on its investment in the Captaris voicemail system with a unified messaging solution, CallXpress, also from Captaris, which works in conjunction with the school's Microsoft Exchange installation to make voice, e-mail and fax messages accessible by either telephone or PC. Conveniently, there's already a PC in every classroom. "Teachers use headphones and the PCs have microphones on them, so they can respond back to internal voicemails [from their desks," says Buddy Anderson, business administrator at the school. The teachers, however, do not have the ability to originate a call from their PCs at present.

VoiceXpress, a VAR and Captaris business partner, handled the CallXpress installation about two years ago and is now working on an upgrade. "We started with Episcopal School as a customer about eight years ago by installing their voicemail for their phone system, and it progressed from there," says Cade Stapleton, president of VoiceXpress, also in Baton Rouge.

Anderson says Episcopal's in-house network rivals any large corporation, and he credits the school's board of trustees with its ability to recognize the value of IT. "They are probably better equipped, IT-wise, than anybody down here, short of NASA," Stapleton says.

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It's not just being well-equipped though; it's how the equipment is used. Episcopal's foreign language teachers, for example, are using the CallXpress messaging system as a teaching tool, as well as a messaging solution. Each language teacher leaves messages for students, asking the students to call in and listen to the prerecorded dialogue and respond from home via telephone.

While a number of schools are considering Voice-over-IP implementations, there are drawbacks. Many are taking a wait-and-see approach, particularly if they lack the basics of a networking infrastructure.

But when used, it can be a great asset, even beyond the walls of the school. Jim Hirsch, the assistant superintendent for technology at the Plano Independent School District in Plano, Texas, says his district is working to provide network access to families of the school district's children. The school will authenticate those dialing into the network, and will let them take advantage of the investment in infrastructure the school district has already made. "The advantage is that the investment in our technology infrastructure can be used well beyond the school day," Hirsch says, noting that families with high-speed or broadband access will be able to tap into the school's reference databases and its software applications through an agreement Plano's school district made with an ASP.

Dziuba of Erie 1 BOCES says he's testing home connections in some of his area's school districts, too, offering parents access to their children's grades and to their homework assignments online. Dziuba also says the long-standing letter-grade system will be defunct soon, providing instead a list of key competencies the student has mastered. Instead of earning a "B" in math, for example, the student's report card will soon show whether the child has learned to add and subtract fractions. New York State is at the forefront of this grading revolution, and Dziuba says he expects this method to catch on nationwide. Technology, he adds, will play a significant role in this movement, helping teachers not only to report student competencies, but also to share that information with each other. "Hopefully, what will end up happening," Dziuba says, "is that teachers will assign projects that offer a holistic viewpoint of a number of different skills."

6. Security