Singlewire Resource Blog » Bells and Clocks

Whitepaper – How to Modernize You School’s Bells, Overhead Paging, and Mass Notification in Times of Austerity

Brad Parkel — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Cut costs, improve safety, and realize efficiencies by combining passing bells, overhead paging, and emergency communication into one system.

At a time when many schools are facing budget constraints, larger teacher-to-student ratios in classrooms, smaller staff sizes, and aging school buildings, administrators are being asked to do more with less. To compound this problem, there is a growing expectation to provide quick and effective communication with staff, students, and parents in the event of a school emergency. Knowing where, how, and when to make improvements to address these needs can be challenging.

In the following whitepaper, we’ll look at the ways you can modernize and consolidate your school’s bells, overhead paging system, and emergency communication system to save money and time.

Schools Turn to InformaCast to Save Money with School Bell in Times of Austerity

Brad Parkel — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Consolidate bell & clock system and PA system onto one network for cost savings and improved flexibility

Singlewire InformaCast enables you to manage your bell schedules, centrally program and manage your clocks and provide you a means of immediately sending an emergency notification to your entire organization with the click of a button.

Yeah so it's helping. You know, what we hear sometimes in the budget cuts is that they're pulling back the facilities and maintenance people that are doing that day-to-day work. Now, what they're trying to become is more efficient with their time and how they send their people's people out to each site or how their resources are being allocated.

The concept we talked about before of, you know, 60 different schools, 60 different bell systems, and having someone have to jump in a van, drive to each location, manage those bells.

That costs time and that costs money and it also costs resources, to have someone be able just to do that from their desk is in turn saving you money. And instead of having a lot of people manage those systems, you're actually consolidating meaning being able to do it through just a few individuals, and potentially giving them the ability to do different tasks that they weren't able to do previously because they were burdened with other things like managing the bell scheduling system.

Now, if things are happening throughout their facilities that they need to do more day-to-day routine maintenance, it's not gonna be something where you have to prioritize. Is the bell scheduling is more important than fixing something that's broken at a location?

So just from that standpoint trying to do more with less, you're definitely taking advantage of that with InformaCast.

Learn More – Watch On-Demand K-12 Demo | One-minute Video – School Bell Software with InformaCast | Consider Installing InformaCast Compliant IP Speakers

Integrating IP Speakers and Analog Speaker with Singlewire LPI

Brad Parkel — Thu, 26 May 2011 15:00:00 +0000

Singlewire’s Legacy Paging Interface (LPI) allows you to incorporate your existing paging system with our InformaCast® application. You save money and time by leaving your existing paging system in place, and you gain functionality and versatility in your paging abilities. With Singlewire LPI you can integrate with existing analog paging systems and newer IP-speakers.

Yeah, so you may see in many organizations where they have existing analog infrastructure, an existing system that's in place, some of these are older antiquated systems that, you know, are twenty, thirty years old.

Some are, you know, we even hear about, are older than that or they're on their last leg. Some of the speakers that were connected to that system may not work any longer, and people will say OK we don't want to try to fix the system anymore we're just going to gradually migrate to IP speakers and put those into areas where the older speakers may have failed.

The other concept too, is you think about it from that zoning concept of IP speakers versus analog systems now. The analog systems typically are very large areas like warehouse maybe even a large office where it's a single broadcast zone.

You may use those but supplement IP speakers in areas that wouldn't reach to or if you need to do individual zoning in different areas within that facility to put those IP speakers where you need some granularity.

So, a question of how big of a zone do you need, you know, sometimes analog makes a lot of sense because it's a one very big zone and some of the price points will make more sense to go analog but if you're really looking to get granular with zoning IP speakers typically are a better solution.

Learn More

Watch our short white board video on LPI

A New and More Cost Effective Way to Ring Your School Bells

Brad Parkel — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:45:00 +0000

Centralizing your bell scheduling system into a software based solution can save your school district money and time. Our solution enables you to manage your bell schedules, centrally program and manage your clocks and provide you a means of immediately sending an emergency notification to your entire organization with the click of a button.

So the bells are basically configured through the software. We specify a time. Now we can actually specify a time down to the second, or we can trigger an alarm or an audio notification using InformaCast.

Those audio tones are just basically wave files saved within the InformaCast system. So they can be customized. They can be tones you're familiar with. We do provide example tones for you to use, but we have people get very creative with that and potentially record their own spoken voice. We had a school district in Wisconsin where the principal recorded the passing bells. It was him saying the passing period one is happening at this time, please report to period two, that was their passing bells.

Or you can do the traditional ringing tone, that a lot of people are used or just some steady tone options but it's really the concept of specifying the time within the software, the type of tone that you want to have and you can select different options for tones. So maybe the first period passing bell is one tone but the ready bell for the next period is a different tone let students know that there's a difference between those, and then just scheduling those throughout the day.

You know, 7 AM bell one goes off, at 7:05, bell two goes off to let people know that they should be class at that time.

Learn More – Singlewire Bells and Clocks solution One-minute Video | Online K-12 Demo

A Do Nothing Solution for Updating Your School Bells for Daylight Savings

Brad Parkel — Mon, 16 May 2011 13:00:00 +0000

InformaCast automatically updates the clock and bell schedules to reflect the changes in daylight savings time, saving school districts time and money.

Learn more about Singlewire’s solution for bell scheduling by listing to this short podcast.

Yeah, so because we're running on a Windows platform, the system is updated for daylight savings, those bells and clocks are in turn being adjusted at the same time so those, the time source is that InformaCast server, which most people point some type of network time protocol source NTP so that they're getting accurate time throughout their entire school district.

So you don't have to be concerned that at this school the bell else going off a minute before the ones at the other location. Everything is synchronized and playing those audio streams alt the same time across the entire district, and if daylights savings time comes through, everything is just automatically adjusted in and it doesn't require additional maintenance of the system at that point.

Singlewire Demos IP Paging Software at Cisco’s Midwest Partner Summit

Allie McGuire — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Singlewire is attending Cisco’s Midwest Partner Summit today in Kansas City. There we will be talking about our IP paging software solutions and how they can help with emergency notification, overhead paging and bell scheduling in a K-12 environment. Hope … Continue reading →

Bell, Clock and Paging System That Works Together, Especially in an Emergency

Allie McGuire — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:00:00 +0000

“Having a bell, clock, and paging system that works together is a necessity for the school, especially in an emergency. It was great to have the time synchronized in the computers, IP phones, and IP speakers.”

- Elena Alvarez, Technology Director at Christopher Columbus High School

Christopher Columbus School Extends Overhead Paging with InformaCast

Allie McGuire — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 15:00:00 +0000

The Client
Christopher Columbus High School in Miami, FL, is a private, college preparatory high school. Conducted by the Marist brothers, CCHS has been providing educational excellence since 1958 and currently has an enrollment of approximately 1,400 students and a campus spread out across four main academic buildings on 19 acres.

The Business Challenge
In 2007 Christopher Columbus High School owned both an analog two way paging system and a separate system for scheduling and maintaining their school bells. The paging system was starting to fail in some of the classrooms. The bell system had to be programmed manually by one of the few employees that understood how to use it. In addition, each clock throughout the school had to be synchronized by hand including the two times per year when the time changed due to daylight savings time.

At that time the school was beginning work on a new technology center, and it was time to take a serious look at replacing the old system that was in place. “Since we were in the process of constructing the new Mas Technology Complex we decided to take a look at what would be best for the school as a whole at the time and in the future” explains Elena Alvarez, the Technology Director at Christopher Columbus High School. They were looking for a system that would integrate all of their technology and make use of their existing Cisco phone system, as well as allow them to communicate efficiently throughout the school and across its multiple buildings.

The Solution
In 2007, United Data Technologies introduced Christopher Columbus High School to InformaCast and Atlas Sound two-way IP speakers with clocks. By that fall they had implemented a Singlewire solution to address the challenges of mass communication and clock synchronization throughout the school. “Having a bell, clock, and paging system that works together is a necessity for the school, especially in an emergency,” notes Alvarez. “It was great to have the time synchronized in the computers, IP phones, and IP speakers.”

InformaCast not only made use of the Cisco IP phones the school had already invested in and the new IP Speakers they installed, but it also integrated with their existing analog speakers allowing them to save money in the process.

CCHS now has a two-way intercom and live paging system that allowed them to communicate effortlessly across their entire campus. “InformaCast provided us with a unified system with ease of management that allows us to even communicate with the baseball field and the weightlifting room wirelessly” notes Alvarez.
In addition to providing CCHS with a two-way intercom system, InformaCast also came with a bell scheduler. With only the click of a button, school administrators could now make changes in the school’s bell schedules.
Christopher Columbus High School’s solution also includes Singlewire’s DORA. CCHS uses DORA as a panic button in their classrooms. “Each classroom has been equipped with a wall plate that has a red button for teachers to press in case of an emergency. If this button is pushed, all of our administrators receive a message on their phones that consists of a special sound and text stating what room is calling and what number to use via the intercom system to investigate,” explains Alvarez.

The Benefit
InformaCast provided Christopher Columbus High School with a new mass notification and overhead paging system that lets them make use of their existing technology and reach every corner of their campus. The bell scheduling capabilities of InformaCast also meant no more manual programming or changing every clock by hand.

“The InformaCast software is very easy to manage and use, has allowed us to take advantage of the IP phones as well as the IP speakers,” states Alvarez. “InformaCast allowed us to assign the same code we had for each area in the old system. This was very important for us since it made the change easier for the users. It provided us the flexibility of creating different groups.”

Podcast – Singlewire Solutions for K-12

Brad Parkel — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 20:15:12 +0000

Singlewire InformaCast is a software solution that cost-effectively leverages the investment you’ve already made in your Cisco network, providing you with overhead paging, call monitoring, and management of your school’s bells and clocks.

We're here talking with Pat Sheckel, Vice-President of business development with Singlewire. Welcome Pat.

Thank you.

You want to talk about the typical pain points for school districts and what they experience.

Well, for many of them, they have emergency notification on their minds. What with, you know, what's happened at schools all over the country in different distinct incidents. They're also thinking about bells and clocks and how do they synchronize those. Bells, clocks and paging are often different systems and require different maintenance contracts and are very, very difficult to administer on a day to day basis.

So do you want to talk about what solutions exist? Is there one that ties these things together?

So we addressed that as using Singlewire InformaCast and some of the features inside of InformaCast, including our bell scheduling and our ability to tie into, either legacy paging systems or into ip-based power over ethernet speakers, gives us the ability tie bells, clocks, paging altogether with the phone system and make that a seamless administrative effort. When you talked about legacy paging, you know, a lot of school districts might know of it as the black box in that room. The one that they don't want to touch.
Is that something that we're looking to tap into?

Yeah. Absolutely. One of the problems, when you look at that wiring closet or wherever they might have this equipment, you'll see one mini fridge device with flip these switches on it for bells. And then you'll see another one potentially for paging and they are administered by different third party entities, requiring very specialized expertise. They may be 15-20 years or older and it's not easy to do if you have a snow day, if you have a teacher in service day and something is unscheduled then you have to call in somebody to come in and administer that.

And the way we address that is we put all into software and then if you have a 2 hour late start, for whatever reason, it's just a couple of clicks and you can change the bells and the clocks and you can do that for the entire district at once.

Now do I just play out how this would work for an administrator or principal or even an office admin in how they would interact with the system and how it would work? Yes. So our administrative interface is web browser-based, so they can do this from anywhere. So one of the things that we've heard is, if there's really a challenging weather event out there, it might be difficult for someone from the administration to get to the school building to be able to do any sort of changes or to get some sort of notification out.

Say that they need to get to the other side of town to that district building in order to let people out early or, if there is a late start or what-have-you.

And because we're browser-based, they can get or, if there is a late start or what-have-you.

And because we're browser-based, they can get to the administrative interface from anywhere and from any phone, for that matter too, they can certainly dial in to the system as well.

So if they have access to a phone or access to a web browser, they can do all the administration that they need.

I've heard one customer make the comment that it's as easy as shopping online, in terms of switching bells or making a change. Yeah, yeah. That' very true, it's very simple, intuitive interface and, you know, we train people on it, our partners, and impliment our software -trained people on it. And once they're trained, it's really very simple to use.

Very good. We invite you learn more about how Singlewire can help your school address these needs of overnight paging, the school bell system and passing bells for mass notification, emergency communication by visiting us at http://www.singlewire.com/K12 . Thanks Pat.

Thank you.

Centrally Manage Your School Bell Schedules with InformaCast

Brad Parkel — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:19:10 +0000

When you need to set the clocks and bell schedules in your school, do it from a simple web portal. Here's how it works:

After logging in to InformaCast, a school administrator can centrally add, delete or modify bell schedules for all the schools in the district with the click of a button. For Daylight Savings Time changes, the InformaCast server automatically recognizes the time change and updates each of your bell schedules for all of your schools. Use Singlewire InformaCast to centrally manage the clocks and bell schedules in your school. Learn more about our solution by visiting www.singlewire.com/k12.

When you need to set the clocks and bell schedules in your school, do it from a simple web portal.

Here’s how it works.

After logging into InformaCast, school administrators can add, delete or modify bell schedules for all the schools in the district. With the click of a button, the changes can be implemented.

Logging onto InformaCast via a secure web portal, a school administrator can quickly add, delete or modify the bell schedules for the entire school district and instantly apply the changes.

For daylight savings time bell schedule changes, the InformaCast server automatically recognizes the time change and updates each of your bell schedules for all of your schools.

Use Singlewire InformaCast to centrally manage the clocks and bell schedules in your school.

Learn more about our solution by visiting singlewire.com/k-12.

Managing School Bells with Singlewire InformaCast

Brad Parkel — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 21:44:35 +0000

One minute video. When there’s a change in your class schedule, make modifications to your bells with the click of a button. Save time and money by using Singlewire InformaCast to manage the bell schedules in your school.

When there's a change in your class schedule, make modifications to your bells with a click of a button.

Here's how it works: A school assembly has been planned. The school bells need to be updated to reflect compressed schedule for that day. School staff logs into the Singlewire InformaCast web portal, finds the modified schedule from their list of options and, updates the ring time of the bells with a click of a button.

The bell system is immediately updated with the new times. Save time and money by using Singlewire InformaCast and manage the bell schedules in your school. Learn more by visiting us at singlewire.com/k12.

Podcast – Using InformaCast with Legacy Analog Paging Systems – LPI

Brad Parkel — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:30:28 +0000

Learn how the Legacy Paging Interface or LPI from Singlewire Software can be used to connect InformaCast to legacy analog paging systems.

Transcript

INTERVIEWER: We’re talking with Ken Bywaters, Executive Vice President of Product Management. Ken, can you talk to us about the LPI or Legacy Paging Interface? What is this and what does it do?

KEN: Sure, so the LPI, you know, maybe we didn’t name it that, all that glamorous but this is what it does. For people with an existing paging system, an analog paging system, but that also have Cisco phones and desktops we’re using InformaCast to talk to those things, you want to be able to talk to your existing speakers as well. And there’s several ways to do this, but a fairly recent one, at least starting in Fall 2009 was the LPI. And the LPI is software. It’s separate from InformaCast and it allows you to connect InformaCast or ControlKom, for that matter to your existing paging system through software

And the key differences are, it’s a very clean set-up. So you can set up the LPI and have it connect to your existing paging system through an fxo or fxs port on your router. Any analog connection from CallManager to your paging system, we can take advantage of.

And beyond that we can also send zone information to that paging system. So a lot of the existing paging systems are zoned, I think they’re four zones or eight zones, and you use keys on your phone, DTMF maps to select which zone you’re talking to.

Within the LPI you can set all of that up. So we mimic all the zones so that you can just say, “Well, Zone 1 is this and Zone 2 is this. You know, East Wing, West Wing”, whatever. And then within InformaCast it all shows up as, you name it. East Wing of Building 1, West Wing of Building 1, things like that. And this way you don’t have to go to your phone and hit pound-1 to talk to that zone. You can send an InformaCast message, we connect to that zone and that paging system as well as send the message out to Cisco phones and desk tops and high beam speakers like we’ve always done.

And the way we’ve done it is, it’s synchronous so you don’t, it’s not two separate messages. We actually place a phone call to that existing paging system and stream the audio to it at the same time we stream the audio out to all of the devices on the IP network.

INTERVIEWER: This sounds like a great solution for an organization, a school, or a business that may be in an older facility but yet, want some of the modern conveniences or abilities of InformaCast. Is that where you’re seeing this go into?

KEN: Yeah, it’s going into almost every market that we serve but your example of schools is a good one. So a K-12 district, let’s just take a typical one. Let’s say they have 20 schools in the district. It’s a good bet that they’ve got multiple manufacturers of analog paging systems in those 20 schools. They might have three or four different manufacturers scattered around those 20 schools.

And no way to centrally manage their bell schedules, no way to get a message out, district-wide, or anything like that. With InformaCast and the LPI, you can bring all of those 20 schools online on the IP network using the LPI and then you centrally use InformaCast to manage all of your bell schedules or do a district-wide announcement.

So, for not very much money per school, you can immediately get district-wide notification and central bell management without any hardware or architectural changes. And that’s what’s difficult for schools. To change an existing paging system usually means changing the rack of equipment that was built many years ago or slopping other things in or running new cable. You don’t have to do any of those things. You can just do it all on software and get all the benefits that you would, if you built all new schools with all new cabling and IP speakers. Just use your existing infrastructure to get those benefits.

INTERVIEWER: So I’m assuming then, too, once a new facility would come online or be built, it’s just as easy then to wire that with Cat-5 and have a regular network-type installation and keep the functionality all in place. Is that the case?

KEN: Yep. People mix and match all the time. And it’s obviously completely cost-driven. In a new building, the cost of running copper wire through conduits and putting power supplies and amplifiers all in that network for dedicated analog paging system can actually end up being a lot more than just running simple Cat-5 to IP speakers.

So if you do have new construction mixed in with your existing buildings, your existing paging system, it’s easy to mix and match. And InformaCast doesn’t care. It looks all the same, to us.

INTERVIEWER: Now if I’m a school administrator or a building facility manager listening to this, what do I need to know? I mean, is this a proven technology? Is this something that can work and is working in existing buildings now?

KEN: Oh yeah, it’s working at many, many places. So, if you’re a facility manager, most people in that role are burdened with making changes to the system, knowing lots of different systems. You can have it, in K-12 in particular, if you have a, let’s say, a two hour delay, having to go to that school and make the change to that system, that can be very time consuming and burdensome.

So, again with this, with InformaCast and the LPI, you can centrally manage all of that. And it’s a very clean and very simple way to connect to your existing paging system. So you don’t have to do it, or what’s very common, you don’t have to pay another company to drive out and do it.

I’ve had a lot of customers who’ve said before we put this in, any time we made a change to our analog paging system, it cost us a minimum of $600, for every change.

So, with the LPI it was very clean and simple and now they can zone things or make broadcasts or do anything they want themselves. And it’s very simple to do.

INTERVIEWER: Now we have some materials on our website. What is, what’s a typical route for one to learn more about this solution?

KEN: Probably the best route is to contact your Singlewire salesperson. Or contact Singlewire sales in general. We can get you all the information, any documentation, including the product to try out. Most of the time people have questions about the specific paging system they have, but the way we’ve implemented it, it doesn’t matter to us what kind of system you have. We just add a very simple analog connection to it, so a lot of choices.

INTERVIEWER: Very good. Thank you, Ken, for your time.

KEN: Thank you.

Saved by the Bell – Large California School District Implements InformaCast

Brad Parkel — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:00:00 +0000

One of California’s largest school districts chose an IP telecom system to boost its schools’ safety, but discovered many other benefits.

Appearing in EdTech K-12

Story by Julie Sturgeon, Photo by Max S Gerber

As principal at Chaparral High School, Lucia Washburn no longer dreads lockdowns.

Each year, the Grossmont Union High School District requires each facility to conduct two such emergency drills. Officials sound a special alarm, and students must get to the nearest room that has a door or that locks. Teachers practice keeping students safe in that secure space, and the El Cajon police officers check every room to make sure the campus is secure. The entire process lasts an average of 10 minutes — but for Washburn, it was 10 minutes of frustration because her building had no public address system. Instead, she communicated with teachers over telephone speakers.

“If the class was a bit loud, they couldn’t hear anything,” she notes.

In the fall of 2005, Jack Blaylock, director of technical services at this San Diego, Calif.-area district, selected Chaparral to investigate a new IP telecom system under consideration. Singlewire (formerly Berbee) billed its InformaCast product as a robust, full-featured system that allows users to simultaneously push an audio stream and/or a text message to multiple Internet Protocol phones and speakers. The Madison, Wis., manufacturer originally built the system for the Department of Commerce after personnel there found themselves banging on doors on 9/11 in an effort to evacuate a building without loudspeakers.

Of course, Blaylock wasn’t willing to invest in new switches, speakers and software for one building; he had a bigger challenge on his hands. The 19 campuses in this high school district handed him a mixed bag of four or five different notification systems. “Some of it, I don’t know if there’s a brand name on it because it goes back 50 years [to] when the school was built,” he says.

The variety alone meant a lot of downtime for the maintenance department as it struggled to stock the right parts to keep each independent intercom system, bell scheme and clock working. And then it was nearly impossible to keep any two clocks within a high school in sync with each other — one class would pack up early waiting on the bell while another was caught by surprise. “They were all in really bad shape, so it was the prime time to catch up with the standards,” Blaylock reports. “IP basically rolled all three areas into one.”

Today, the announcement system is an enterprise that allows users to contact any combination of schools simultaneously. Because each intercom carries an IP address, officials narrow their message as specifically as the math department at one, two, three or all the high schools.

“Anyone with the code can make an emergency broadcast from any telephone in the school,” Blaylock notes. Users can also send a text-only update flagged by an unobtrusive audible alert, so administrators can sidestep starting a schoolwide panic over the speakers, says Ken Bywaters, director of voice products at Singlewire.

IP Telecom Made Sense

Grossmont Union High School District began converting to an IP structure in 2000, starting with phones and then adding security cameras. Because Blaylock built the network using Optical Carrier OS3s between the school and his servers, bandwidth wasn’t an issue. “It made it very easy, when a product like this came along, to put it on our network,” he says. “We didn’t have to go out and buy a bunch of equipment and make a drastic change. It was just a matter of adding more ports.”

The district also had another advantage already in place. Back in 1990, administrators ran fiber underground between the buildings to avoid shutting down entire campuses in case of lightning strikes, electrical surges and other problems. It has enhanced the infrastructure over time, running new fibers for faster speed on the data network, and reducing as many as 10 conduits to four.

Still, architects working on building renovations relied on yesterday’s features from names they already knew — Dukane, Rauland-Borg — to create the bid specifications. They were solid products, Blaylock knew from his research, but in the end the district would wind up paying for duplicate features using that route. For instance, the IP phones covered the same needs as a two-way intercom system did.

“And you still had to go to the local call box and have wires run to the cabinet,” he says. Those wires usually ran along the roof, where Mother Nature rotted away the elements. Blaylock estimates that 30 percent to 40 percent of the analog speakers in some of his schools no longer work.

So what Singlewire suggested was tempting, “but it was new,” he adds. “What if it doesn’t do everything it says it will? What’s the turnaround on parts if something breaks? How quickly can we get service to it here on the West Coast?” played like a drumbeat in his head. He called a colleague at Rialto (Calif.) Unified School District whom he knew through the California Educational Technology Professional Association for a heart-to-heart conversation on the district’s satisfaction with InformaCast, and decided it was at least worth a pilot test at Chaparral.

The system’s cost was an issue for Blaylock. “The speakers were more expensive than I’m used to paying. But even when you took that price and the licensing fees and add it all together versus the infrastructure costs to go with the traditional system, I was out in front. Once we had some of those numbers put together, it started making more and more sense.”

Testing … One, Two, Three

On the other hand, Grossmont Union did need to make a few up-front network investments. True, the district already enjoyed Optical Carrier 3s’ 155-megabits-per-second lines running between the school campuses and Blaylock’s department at the district’s headquarters. But because it built its IP network more than five years ago, it met 5e standards that have changed when it comes to switching for Power Over Ethernet. In a nutshell, Blaylock needed to purchase one new Cisco switch to run power ports to the equipment. Happily, the InformaCast system needs no electrical plug because it is fed right from the data switch.

The initial installation was a no-brainer. The district had two possibilities to choose from: set a server at the site or run the entire operation from the district headquarters. Blaylock chose the first because “if anything happens at the office, you don’t want to take down everyone’s communication system. When you get more than 10 schools wide, you don’t want headquarters to be the weak point,” he says. So he bought an enterprise license from Berbee, set up a server at Chaparral, installed the InformaCast software, and then tied that server back to his main server.

His team spent a week getting the hardware into place and then another month fine-tuning the configurations and adjusting speaker volumes in each classroom. And after the initial configuration, the clocks suddenly quit. Turns out, the IT department assumed the settings rather than seeking the manufacturer’s recommendations, which caused a problem in the software. Thankfully, the proper configurations righted the gaffe.

Blaylock admits the next rollout should be faster now that they’ve worked out these bugs, although other high schools will offer a challenge — to amplify football fields and other outdoor areas that 350-student Chaparral High School doesn’t offer.

Since then, school administrators have made their own tweaks. They prerecorded the lockdown message so that if they’re ever in the midst of a real emergency, Washburn can activate it by pushing two phone buttons.

Police department feedback during lockdowns resulted in Chaparral posting periodic updates during the drill to give teachers a sense of what’s happening outside their darkened classrooms. During spring break in 2007, the local SWAT team used Chaparral as a training ground for its officers, and suggested school administrators run the emergency announcement on a continuous loop.

IP allowed them to incorporate everyone’s advice with ease. According to Blaylock, schools can program an entire year’s worth of class dismissal bells and drills online in one sitting. Changing a date is no more complicated than using an e-mail program, in his opinion — just log into the software, type the change and close the program. Washburn is of a different mind. Using the system to make an announcement is “super simple” in her experience, but as a nontechnical person, she votes for a training session to get users comfortable with the change order process.

But even easy isn’t fail proof, as Washburn learned when a fire broke out in the high school’s kitchen in the fall of 2005. The principal wanted to inform students the fire department was on its way and maintain updates throughout the drama, but instead accidentally tapped into the phone system’s Muzak loop, playing elevator music to the waiting teens.

“Which, of course, is the worst music they could hear,” she laughs. Washburn made up for it by using the IP telecom to pipe Pirates of the Caribbean music throughout the building during a special celebration this spring.

Design Zone for Education – A Singlewire InformaCast Resource from Cisco for Deploying Emergency and Mass Notification

Brad Parkel — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:43:06 +0000

Cisco Notifi-Ed Solution Deployment Design Guide

Cisco has created a design guide resource for deploying emergency and mass notification systems for education as part of the Cisco Notifi-Ed solution.

The Cisco Notifi-Ed solution for School Safety and Security is a Cisco Validated Design (CVD) that provides school districts with an integrated communications system for rapid mass and audience-specific message broadcasting. The solution demonstrates how the Cisco Unified Communications can be used by Reliance Communication’s SchoolMessenger system and Singlewire’s InformaCast product to deliver rapid communications to school administrators, teachers, students, and parents through audio, Register for Text Messages (SMS) text, and email and to receive and log acknowledgements from message recipients, a critical function in emergency situations where school districts must be sure that parents have received announcements about the well-being of their children. The Cisco Notifi-Ed can be used to send emergency communication as well as daily operational announcements to the broader community that consists of parents, school district administrators, school faculty, students, and law enforcement.

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Cisco Case Study – Los Alamitos Unified School District

Brad Parkel — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:15:11 +0000

The Los Alamitos Unified School District integrates paging, bells, alarms, text alert messages along with simultaneous broadcast of audio and text to IP phones, IP speakers, desktops, overhead paging systems and much more with Singlewire InformaCast, Cisco, and SchoolMessenger.

Located in the heart of Orange County, California, Los Alamitos Unified School District (LAUSD) has always believed in high standards for its staff, faculty, administrators, and students. District officials rely heavily on collaboration and communication tools to generate quality education and growth potential opportunities to meet the needs of its students. In particular, LAUSD strives to build partnerships with the leading technology providers to supply the support and resources needed for its students to achieve academic excellence and develop unique talents in
preparation for their future goals.

LAUSD had an outdated network and was unable to communicate effectively with key stakeholders, including the parents of its students. With the support of the community, the LAUSD Board of Education implemented a three-year Technology Use Plan to achieve its next level of technology-based curriculum. The plan called for a revamp of the entire network infrastructure, incorporating a solution that would enable all schools within the district to communicate general announcements, individual student related information, and emergency broadcasts to parents quickly and efficiently.

LAUSD turned to Cisco and its partners, SchoolMessenger and Singlewire, to accomplish its goals, moving from a decentralized to a centralized solution that provided a robust notification system for all of its schools to utilize across the district.

Download the full press release. – PDF

Solutions for Classrooms – Cisco Podcast

admin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:41:17 +0000

The Solutions for Classrooms podcast features Ken Bywaters, ExecutiveVP of Product Management.

Link to Podcast

Chris Barwick, Cisco Public Sector Regional Manager and Ken Bywaters discuss utilizing Berbee Informacast and Atlas IP speakers in the classroom.

Webcast for K-12 Professionals

admin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:50:59 +0000

Mass Notifications Solutions for K-12 with Singlewire InformaCast and Atlas IP Speaker Products featuring Ken Bywaters, Singlewire Executive Vice President of Product Management

Date: April 29, 2009 at 11:00 AM PDT (2 PM EDT)
Duration: One hour
Sponsored by: Cisco Systems, Inc.

Click to View

Please click to view this on-demand webinar presentation. Join Cisco and T.H.E Journal for a special webcast that focuses on secure, fast, and reliable mass communications capabilities for your school district.

You will learn how the integration of Cisco Unified Communications, Singlewire InformaCast, and Atlas IP Speakers can help you:

* Send audio stream and text messages to Cisco IP phones, speakers, and PCs
* Create live, ad-hoc, or pre-recorded audio broadcasts and/or text broadcasts
* Schedule messages to be sent a pre-set time or on a recurring basis

Discover how solutions are working for districts like yours. Hear from a school district who is benefiting from their new mass communications capabilities.

Gain the knowledge you need to communicate with key decision makers outside of IT. We are ready to demonstrate how these solutions can answer the critical business challenges facing your school district.

Click to View

SRVUSD Implements InformaCast Bell, Clock and PA System

admin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:10:38 +0000

San Ramon Valley Unified School District Saves Time and Money with InformaCast Bell, Clock and PA System

[MUSIC] JOHN THRESHIE: We're a district with 31 schools in Northern California. We have about 24,000 students in our district at this time. And, we've got a fair amount of rapid growth going on, and so over the next four or five years, we're building I guess, it's four or five more schools. We have also had in process for the last three years a pretty large facilities bond measure in which we have been remodeling or modernizing -- I think we've done about half a dozen schools so far -- and we have another three that are just beginning.[MUSIC] We decided about a year and a half ago to go ahead and capture some pretty some pretty substantial construction cost savings by trying to go towards one wire type solutions. We found if we built our concepts in, of, you know, eliminating conduit and cable infrastructure, we found for the same money we could not only end up with a significantly superior telephone system for the school, but also start building a district based telephone system using the capabilities in call manager and other products as well. RIC JOHANSON: The beauty of the Cisco phone being that you can piggyback a computer right off the, off the phone. JOHN THRESHIE: About two years ago in conversations we had with Burbie's (SP?) Ken Biwater (SP?), we discovered that you know, the company was really ready at that point to start putting out addressable speakers and zoning controllers and all these kinds of things that would allow us to cost effectively build school live bell and P.A. systems, and help us go ahead and eliminate two or three more low voltage cable systems which was part of our construction savings goals. And, as I said before with call manager, one of our objectives was to end up with a system which had far better quality, but at the same cost; and InformaCast absolutely fit that bill.[MUSIC] CAROL LOFLIN: I have total access to communications systems throughout the campus right here on my desktop. So, we have seven buildings and there are no indoor walkways; they're all outdoor walkways. So, again, we need a speaker system that can project out to the playground as well as to the various wings because we're so spread out.[MUSIC] RIC JOHANSON: Well, typically there's two or several types of announcements that'll go out. There'll be a general announcement to the campus to a group of classrooms, say first graders, you might have an announcement that's made. So the principal will pick up the phone and do -- we don't do live broadcasts, presently we're doing recorded message -- the principal will dial in, get the prompt, record the message, hang up the phone, and the message is sent. CAROL LOFLIN: "Good morning, Quail Run students. We hope you have a wonderful red ribbon week. This morning we are announcing four winners for the character cake contest." RIC JOHANSON: For emergency application we created basically three scenarios: campus lockdown, shelter in place, fire drill. And initiated by the site staff or the administrative staff, either the secretary or their principal, becomes a choice into the services button. Campus lockdown will send a unique tone across all the speakers. The phones will display "secure in place" and that remains on the phone until the end user picks up the phone, makes another call, or cancels the page. So we show it visibly on the phone and it comes out audibly. CAROL LOFLIN: We were having conference week and students weren't on campus, but all this, teachers were here, and parents were here, and somebody had called 911. And, we didn't know who had called, but the police came here and so I was able to do a quick all call to find out who had made the 911 call on campus within a matter of seconds.[MUSIC] JOHN THRESHIE: The InformaCast is easy enough to work with that I'll get an email from a school office manager who says, "You know, for some reason the teacher in room 18 can't hear the announcements very well." So I open up the InformaCast and within a couple of minutes I was able to remember oh yeah, we changed that speaker level, and went ahead and did it. So, for a non-technician to be able to go in there and address those issues, and solve a problem you know, in a minute, is really a wonderful thing.[MUSIC]

Read Case Study (PDF)

San Ramon Valley Unified School District (SRVUSD) encompasses the California communities of Alamo, Danville, Diablo, Blackhawk, and SanRamon as well as a small portion of the cities of Walnut Creek and Pleasanton. It is comprised of 28 schools serving more than 21,000 students in Kindergarten through Grade 12.

The Situation SRVUSD was experiencing rapid growth and needed to modernize many aging schools. These needs led to the construction of eight new schools and the complete modernization of ten more.

Facing construction cost inflation, SRVUSD was looking for ways to migrate to a district-wide telephone system and improve its school low voltage communications systems without exceeding its already-strained budgets.

To capture substantial cost savings, San Ramon Valley began implementing a ‘one-wire’ solution. They no longer used seperate wires for phone, data, and speaker systems. Rather, they ran the entire infrastructure on ‘one-wire’, providing significant costs savings, easy administration, and a very modern platform that is easy to expand.