Do Classrooms need phones?

[dapaulio]

If you had said you were in a secondary school I would have said yes, no need for internal phones in classrooms. Secondaries have more responsible kids that can look after themselves for a moment or a trusted student could easily go on an errand. Secondaries tend to have better alternative means of instant communication Eg sims, teams, Skype, email etc. But the swinging question would be how the secondary school find a balance of avoiding misuse and responding to safeguarding protocol which may require for calling emergency services.

 

Primaries on the other hand having seen how primaries work, they sometimes have two adults in the classroom but have also seen classes with just 1 adult at times and this is where the problem lie, the children are more vulnerable and teachers find it difficult to leave a room even to collect a printout from the central printer in the corridor so the need for a telephone in every classroom in my opinion necessary unless you can introduce and train staff something like Skype or teams for instant communication. I have seen in the past teachers use their own social media to WhatsApp another teacher to look after the kids whilst she had to do a time sensitive task. What she did sensible for the safety of the children but not ideal

Hope this helps

Edited February 15, 2020 by dapaulio

[mavhc]

That might be the case with an old phone system where you pay thousands for the box then do what you like. These days the much more cost effective hosted platforms that offer SIP end point accounts are charged per user per month. I'd flip it round and say, if you're not paying per extension you're doing phones wrong. You're probably paying maintanance for a creaking system, that doesn't support softphones and are still getting billed monthly for calls when most hosted systems include them.

 

I'm paying £0. 1GB ram VM, FreePBX, uptime is 192 days. Replicated to another server for free too. Supports any SIP client, emails voicemails as mp3, got an API so I can create dashboards of which phones are busy, etc etc

[Oakinno]

I'm paying £0. 1GB ram VM, FreePBX, uptime is 192 days. Replicated to another server for free too. Supports any SIP client, emails voicemails as mp3, got an API so I can create dashboards of which phones are busy, etc etc

 

But you're not paying £0 as your SIP trunks and calls aren't included plus there's the cost of your time managing the platforms. There's lots of options out there but I think it's wrong to rule out hosted platforms such Gamma Horizon, Ring Central etc just because you pay per user per month. There's hardly any footprint, it's all hosted by the provider and the cost of calls is relatively small.

[mavhc]

But you're not paying £0 as your SIP trunks and calls aren't included plus there's the cost of your time managing the platforms. There's lots of options out there but I think it's wrong to rule out hosted platforms such Gamma Horizon, Ring Central etc just because you pay per user per month. There's hardly any footprint, it's all hosted by the provider and the cost of calls is relatively small.

 

I'm paying £0 for the phone system, and £5/month per simultaneous call with 5000 free mins (which are added together, not like some hosted systems). Takes no time to manage, almost 200 days of uptime now.

 

There's hardly any footprint, 1GB ram, 6GB storage, and the cost of calls is almost free. Free replication to another server, free backup, as it's just another vm.

 

Plus got to reuse the phones we had before on one site, so saved another £40/phone