Unite and Conquer.  Converged School Communications Has Arrived.

Posted by David Parish, Ph.D., CEO Calypso Systems
Thursday February 18th, 2010 | 0 Comments

The notion of convergence just sounds like a good idea.  Combine previously disconnected pieces and parts into a single, integrated solution to deliver real world financial and operational benefits.  What could be better?  Convergence implies efficiency.  And when real convergence happens, there’s a tendency to stand back and wonder why it hadn’t happened sooner.  Of course, the answer usually has to do with having just the right conditions at just the right time to make it all happen.  Good news K-12 world.  The time is ripe for a major convergence step forward in schools.

We all know the school network battle is over, with virtually all US public schools reported to have pervasive and robust networks, including broadband access to the Internet (http://www.nces.ed.gov).  Similarly, the classroom AV battle is underway and moving along nicely.  Projectors, classroom computers, sound reinforcement and interactive white boards are reported to be in 20-30% of our nation’s schools and the discussion is mostly about how to implement classroom AV, not whether it ought to be done.  It’s commonly accepted that media rich, interactive and collaborative classrooms elevate teaching and learning.

With these pieces moving into place we can now address antiquated school-wide communication systems that, for the most part, have not changed in more than 50 years.  PA systems, bells, emergency alerts and intercom systems continue to live on an island within our nation’s schools, creating an amazing waste of time, money and resources.  We’re literally looking at redundant speakers, wiring, amplifiers, audio switches and installation costs for systems that do nothing more than play audio in the right place at the right time for the right reasons.  Yet with networks and classroom AV now standard, a terrific CONVERGED option has emerged.

Imagine using your existing school network to stream low bit-rate audio to specialized, inexpensive networked amplifiers designed as a standard part of your classroom AV system?  You’ve already installed the network and have made the commitment to classroom sound reinforcement.  So with virtually no incremental cost, all that’s really needed is an appropriate digital head end (we call our’s Conductor) that provides the tools to manage live and scheduled audio files and content distribution.  The result?  Greater flexibility, reliability that’s tied to your network’s uptime (99% in most schools), tremendous operational efficiency and costs savings that one study pegged at nearly 20% compared to traditional school paging systems.

Now why didn’t somebody think of that before?

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