Little-Miss Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 Our new Chair of Governors has been asking if we could have the facility to have conference calling in school. Now i know nada about this. Do you guys have any suggestions? We have great wireless coverage, and our phone lines run via network cabling (sorry forgot posh terms). Skype is an option but just interested in what else is available...
elsiegee40 Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 Oh I had problems with a Trustee who expected us to have the same services that were available to him in the big Financial services company of which he was a director. It was a PITA. A small primary school couldn't afford the conference calling facilities he wanted. They ended up using Skype for multi voice conference calls... it's free as long you don't use video.
X-13 Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 I had problems with a Trustee who expected us to have the same services that were available to him in the big Financial services company of which he was a director. It was a PITA. A small primary school couldn't afford the conference calling facilities he wanted. Those sort of things usually end when I tell them how much it's going to cost. "Oh, you want X, Y AND Z? That'll cost £squillion." phone lines run via network cabling (sorry forgot posh terms). VoIP?
Little-Miss Posted January 11, 2013 Author Posted January 11, 2013 haha! Yes... exactly that. I was going to ask if they were going to fund it actually. Yeah, was wondering about VOIP. I have zero experience with any of these so examples/suggestions are great...
Michael Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 I'm pretty sure Skype is the answer. It's free and easy to use.
plexer Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 Skype plus one of these ClearOne Chat 60 IP USB Skype Conference Phone ??? Ben
Soulfish Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 Everyone in a room and a phone on speakerphone is how we do it here . Technically our super fancy expensive cisco phone system can do it (just like it can do everything aparently) but I suspect we'll have to pay £££ to enable it or £££ to get a consultant to actually set it up or spend weeks digging through the config to make it work. KISS is the answer Alternatively Free Conference Call UK – Powwownow works well for having lots of different people dial into a conference call. Know a few companies that have used it with me, and looks very reasonable price wise!
GrumbleDook Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 Or if you are on Office365 use Lync, or on GApps for Edu then use Hangout.
Little-Miss Posted January 11, 2013 Author Posted January 11, 2013 Thanks guys. Just playing with Skype at the moment....says i'm offline grrrr....
TheScarfedOne Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 Plus 1 here for Office 365 with Lync :-)
jmak Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 To play devil's advocat: As a user I really like conference calls One of the few things I miss from a corporate environment. If we had the facility here, we could do most Governor meetings during the school day, or where evening meetings are unavoidable, at least I could dial in from home. If you can arrange it, web-conferencing adds quite a lot to the user experience - then you know that everyone's looking at the same version of the document being discussed. We used to have the screen sharing enabled as part of Windows Messenger - pretty sure that's part of Office 365, but we don't have Office 365 or Windows messenger enabled in our school, so couldn't confirm whether that's standard.
GrumbleDook Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 I do a fair bit of work via Lync or Skype now ... and still take part in regular edtech webinars using Google Hangout. I even drop into FlashMeeting too. They can all work, but it puts more pressure on organising paperwork beforehand. If people are using VC for governors meetings then making sure that paperwork is with people in advance and that they have read it is very important.
Geoff Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 FreePBX box here. It does conference calling from the get go. If you know what sort of phone system you have we can probably say if it's capable.
Little-Miss Posted January 11, 2013 Author Posted January 11, 2013 All i know is it's through Virgin! lol
tom_newton Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 Some confusion here between the conference call facility, multiway calling, and conference phones Conference call: being able to make a call into a number and expect your buddies to be there in a conference "room" - this is easily achievable on a low usage basis with something like powwownow, which is free setup, but costly calls. Gotomeeting offers conference audio (you don't need the client) at national rate calls, but you will need an account (not mega money). Otherwise most good phone systems (and some bad ones) will do this, but it is often an extra licence Multiway calling: This is where you can call 2 or more people and all talk together. There's no "auto-organiser" and you can't dial in. Many SIP (IP phone) endpoints support this. Cheaper ones just do 2-way, I think I have 3 or 4 way on my endpoint here and it was £150ish. Conference phone hardware "fancy speakerphone" - usually offers multiway calling too. Polycom's IP7000 is by far the best, that's the IP version, they do do a POTS one. They're about 700 notes mind. 1
TechMonkey Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 Your PBX may be able to do it all ready, ours can but I don't know about limitations as we don't use it. An online offering maybe the best option, if your governors are a willing bunch. As others have said, Skype, or Google+ Hangout. WebEx are good for webinar style shared meetings, though that may be overkill. Join.me may do it if it works at your school.
Little-Miss Posted January 11, 2013 Author Posted January 11, 2013 Just to clarify the situation a bit. Our Chair is a business lady. Spends a lot of time in Germany. Currently just does it over speaker phone. Also good for the likes of parent governors who maybe cant get child care so could be more than just the one person. Cheap and cheeful....or free! But sure i can stretch to one of those speakers...
jmak Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 Some confusion here between the conference call facility, multiway calling, and conference phones . Spot on - if you're planning to have one person remote and several round a real table in a room, you need a proper speaker phone, otherwise the people on the end of the phone won't hear half of what's said. The polycoms are top notch and you can pick them up on eBay from around £100
Geoff Posted January 15, 2013 Posted January 15, 2013 The polycoms are top notch and you can pick them up on eBay from around £100 If you know where I can get a Polycom Soundstation IP7000 for £100 I'd be very interested!
jmak Posted January 15, 2013 Posted January 15, 2013 If you know where I can get a Polycom Soundstation IP7000 for £100 I'd be very interested! Unfortunately not an IP7000, but this would be a big improvement on a normal speaker phone, which is what I've seen a lot of people doing before.
jamesfed Posted January 15, 2013 Posted January 15, 2013 If you know where I can get a Polycom Soundstation IP7000 for £100 I'd be very interested! I got my CX700 from eBay for £35 The guy said on the listing if you know what this is then you know what its worth...obviously no one else knew! Either way you can get the odd lucky listing on the aforementioned online trading site.
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