I'll be (working from) home for Christmas!

With the Christmas Holidays (or Winter Break for those of you so inclined) fast approaching, it might be helpful to look at your options of getting some work done while you are away from the campus.

After all the shopping, parties, and gatherings with family and friends, you might just need to sneak off to the office for a while. Here are a few ideas to help you do so without going out in the cold!

The need to access resources inside your school network is the natural result of a maturing infrastructure.  Being able to do important tasks at the office while you are at home or while traveling or on vacation can dramatically improve your administrative oversight. And the ability to remotely access your computer at work is a necessity as workloads continue to encroach upon personal time.

Getting the big picture about remote access and then understanding your options might be helpful in deciding which method or technology is best suited for you. Without a basic understanding and game plan, the implementation of remote access can be a harrowing experience and very confusing. Let’s consider a few options.

From a practical standpoint, there are three methods of interacting with computers and resources in your organization from afar. There are other methods, including VNC, a popular open source solution, but my experience with these other solutions is that they require a higher degree of technical skill, both to install and to use. Our mandate is to keep things simple.

Depending upon the task at hand you may want to use all three of the following methods, which include:

1. Website or web browser based programs
2. Virtual Private Network or VPN
3. Remote Desktop Connection or RDP

Website or browser based programs

Using browser based technologies to connect to resources in your organization is likely the simplest way to access remote resources, unless you have a firewall with remote access features. You have probably seen ads for “GoToMyPC.com” or “Logmein.com”.  This option requires you to visit a provider’s website, create a user account, and then download and install their software.

You then complete this same process on computers to be remotely controlled, by logging into your account installing the same software on each machine to be managed remotely. As you install the remote control software on each remote PC, you will see an icon that represents it in your list of controllable computers.  And if you manage all of your computers in one account, you can control any one of them, at any time by clicking on the icon that represents that specific computer.

The advantage of this type of access is that it is pretty reliable (based upon my own experience) and relatively easy to use. The most complex part of the process is understanding which role you are playing when you are installing the software and getting it set up properly. And be sure to record your passwords or access codes.

The disadvantage of this type of access is that it costs money. It is a subscription based service that will cost about $10.00 per month per machine you wish to control. There are some free versions (www.logmein.com) but they restrict the things you can do while connected using the free version in order to encourage you to buy a full-featured subscription.

It is important to understand that when you use this type of remote access you are only remotely controlling the remote PC. Read this statement slowly three times – I am remotely controlling my remote PC. When you disconnect from the remote PC, the work you have accomplished remains there, unless you specifically transfer the files to your controlling PC or laptop. And there may be challenges associated with getting that file transferred back to your current location.

This is an important concept to understand, because if you spend an hour working on a Power Point presentation at the office. It’s at the office! Saving it back to your home PC or Laptop is not always easy. Additionally, you must have the same software installed on your home PC or Laptop to use the file just created.

Bottom line; understand the inherent limitations of remotely controlling your office computer.

Virtual Private Networks

A VPN connection is an excellent choice for remote access to your network. But it is important to understand how a VPN connection works and the planning required using it. The most common VPN scenario associates your firewall device, installed to protect your network from outside intrusion, to your remote computer via software. The software facilitates the connection by opening a secure pathway across the Internet and through your firewall, to your remote computer. These client programs are normally manufacturer specific, designed to work only with your firewall, and provisioned with a security key or token to verify your identity.

A VPN connection is like virtually connecting an Ethernet cable into your network hub at the office. Just imagine a very long cable from the server room out the door, along the street, up your driveway, and into your den at home and you will get the concept. But that is all a VPN connection will do for you…, give you a remote connection. This alone may not provide you with the remote experience you desire because of the network security built into computers, printers, servers, and other devices at the school.

Think of it this way: you can take any PC or Laptop to the school and plug it into the network, but your connection may be restricted to just a few resources. Unless your PC or Laptop at home is joined to the school’s network, you may only have a connection to the Internet and access to very generously shared resources.

When correctly planned an implemented, a VPN connection can be as close to a seamless or transparent connection to your school network as possible. But it has to be correctly implemented and you need to understand the consequence of that implementation.

For example, joining your home PC or Laptop to the Domain at the school may interrupt the small peer to peer network in your home. And changing from a workgroup to a domain and back may cause you a significant amount of grief. You may even loose important files and documents. (A workgroup is the most common way to create a shared broadband connection at home with DSL or Cable Internet service. A Domain is the network security model used in most schools.)

The benefits of VPN are quite remarkable. You simply turn on your remote PC or Laptop and do your tasks. Since you are part of the network, you will have full access to your email, your shared folders, and Client/Server based applications such as QuickBooks, Microsoft Office, Microsoft SQL, etc.

Remote Desktop

No discussion of remote access would be complete without considering Remote Desktop Connection, or Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), a very useful tool built into all Windows XP and later Microsoft Windows based computers. It is similar to web based remote access technologies in that it allows your home PC or Laptop screen to display your office screen in a real time remote control session. In Windows 7, the Remote Desktop program is found at the Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories folder.

Properly setup, RDP works great. It is quick, reliable, not subject to constant fiddling, and allows you to control both local and remote resources, i.e. local and remote hard drives, printers, and CD’s. And once you are plugged into the network, it can find computers by name.

The challenge in setting up and using remote desktop is twofold. First you must know the name or IP address of the machine you wish to control. And second you must get through the firewall protecting your network. Remote Desktop uses Domain Name Services (DNS) to translate computer names to network addresses, so setting it up can be a little tricky.

RDP is generally a set it and forget it type of configuration. Once it finds your remote desktop, it will remember the settings and allow you to connect quickly by clicking on an icon located on your desktop.

Using RDP will require your network administrator to open a port in your firewall and then route your RDP session to the correct PC. And don’t forget that the on premises user always wins with RDP. In other words, if you are using RDP and someone at the office touches your mouse or presses a key on your keyboard, you will get disconnected. And unlike a browser based technology where users on both ends can see the screen, RDP will not display both the remote and local session at once.

Summary

Technical Support has been completely revolutionized by remote access technologies. It is a fundamental component of providing support services to the schools we manage. And we use each one of these different methods extensively.

As a school administrator, the benefits of remote access should be very obvious to you. Choosing which method to use may be a little less clear and will depend in large measure on what specific task you need to accomplish. It will be further determined by your network infrastructure, Internet bandwidth, installed software, and level of technical support to set it up.

Feel free to call if you need assistance in deciding which of these remote access methods will work best for you. And don’t wait until the holidays begin, you have to set these solutions up while at school – it is quite difficult to do this entirely from home.

One final note: Remote access is not the same thing as working collaboratively with other team members who may also be remote. That kind of anytime, anywhere, access to your important files is a function of your core technology infrastructure. Search this site for articles about Office 365 for Education for more information.

Online Marketing - Part 3 of 3

Which social media platforms are you or someone on behalf of your school using?

The question is becoming more important as the communities we serve get more connected – socially. Equally important is an evaluation of how well your social media strategy and your marketing strategy align, and the extent to which they are used consistent with your school’s current and future policies.

For me personally, just figuring out how to use social media has been a challenge – one that in large measure still eludes me. But I understand it well enough to observe some less than desirable outcomes of what started as good intentions. The purpose of this article is to view social media in its entirety and discuss an overall social media strategy. It seems that there are three common challenges that exist with respect to social media.

Priorities, Processes, and Control

I addressed these issues in an article written over a year ago. And while the popularity and adaptation of the different social media platforms have changed. I believe these principals still apply to all of the variants of social media.

Priorities

It is still my opinion that your first priority, when evaluating online venues, is your school’s website. A properly constructed and managed website becomes a virtual community unto itself and the consolidation point for all of your social media channels. As hard as it is to imagine, there are still plenty of folks – especially parents – who simply don’t get the Facebook phenomena and probably never will. For them a tweet is something they long to hear after a long, cold winter, 1+ is decent Golf score for a tough hole on par 5, and Pinterest is just bad spelling.

So it seems that placing significant content on your main school website ought to be your highest priority. It might be a better strategy to liken your main website to the hub of a bicycle wheel, with all of the spokes leading to/from the hub to your various social venues. From a marketing standpoint, your online strategy, including all of your social channels ought to be designed with the purpose of driving traffic to your school website and gathering leads for prospective students.  Here are some other reasons why your main website ought to be your highest priority:

1. Social platforms, while here to stay are a bit unpredictable and your community will probably move in and out of various social channels on a regular basis. Placing a greater emphasis on social channels at the expense of meaningful content on your website could end up diluting your message over time and eliminating much of your intended audience.
2. Content is king! While social channels are buzzing and brimming with activity, it is still a social channel. Real content, including legally required notices and documents should not to be delivered in a social setting. While announcements, opinions, and chatter can drive awareness of policy and administrative processes, the clear and authorized information should still be on your main website after proper review and publishing guidelines are followed.  
3. The social media landscape is changing very rapidly, and the apparent winners today may not be the winners long-term. Your ability to move in and out of the social channels of choice will be enhanced by a clear website strategy. That strategy should not rely on the success or failure of a particular social media.

Process

Social media as a business (or school) is different than social media for personal use. Understand the difference and avoid mixing the two. If you are into social media, you have undoubtedly experienced cases of extreme over posting. And you certainly don’t want to be like that as an institution. It is not uncommon for companies to employ social media experts, whose sole focus is on developing and delivering social content. While it is unlikely that will have the luxury of such expenditure, there should be a clear strategy in your school about this process
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The last thing your principal wants is another assignment, but someone at that level ought to be the champion of the school and the school’s social media advocate. But principals and other staff members are not perpetual, so be sure that your social media account is.

It is also important to be consistent in your policymaking with respect to social media. Do you attempt to build a Facebook community, but ban the use of Facebook within your school? Are you trying to build a twitter following, but restrict use of mobile devices in your organization?

One idea is to develop your own internal social media platform. This is done automatically for you if you are using the Office 365 for Education platform. See my article about Live@EDU services.

Control

One common challenge is well-intentioned individuals, associated with your school, who create social media accounts using their own personal information and your legal name. This is a very precarious situation that should be handled sooner, rather than later. Having control over your messaging is essential, even when those individuals are key stakeholders in your organization. Much like the nightmares we have seen with domain names, ownership of Facebook pages with your official name by unauthorized individuals can be embarrassing at the least and potentially a legal nightmare in the worst case scenario.

Want to see how big of a problem this is? Just do a Facebook search using the name of your school. If you see more than one entry, you have a problem. More importantly, your users have a problem because they don’t know who to follow.

Social Media can be of great benefit to your school. Set clear priorities, designate specific individuals to manage it, and maintain control of this important piece of intellectual property. And remember, that from a marketing perspective, social media exists to obtain prospective students. So make sure there is a consistent and easy way to gather and track leads for followup.

Online Marketing Part 2 of 3

I have a confession to make. I am not a marketing expert.  So what presumption causes me to write an article about email marketing? First of all, I get slammed by marketing emails daily and have a reasonably good idea about what works for me. And I also subscribe to a number of very helpful newsletters.

As a consumer of both good and bad marketing email, I have experience. As an architect of such systems for customers, I have understanding of system requirements. And there are a number of common sense practices about this subject. Consider the following and see if you don’t agree.

Sending an email newsletter is one of the most cost effective ways of reaching an audience. Once configured, it costs virtually nothing to send and if created with some artistic consideration, can be a welcome addition to the mindless advertising that prevails in your subscriber’s inbox.  And if managed properly, your electronic newsletter can be self-supporting. Subscribers can add, remove, and modify their email and choose the format of your message.

So what is the difference between a helpful email newsletter and mindless email advertising?

I would boil it down to three simple ideas. You might want to conduct an internal review. Of course your own situation will depend on your intended audience, but develop your email newsletter with these concepts in mind:

• Permission
• Content
• Frequency

Permission

The most important principle that you should observe is permission, as in having it. There is nothing more annoying than to receive unsolicited email, which is primarily advertising, that pretends to be an informative newsletter.  Well, there is something more annoying, getting the same message several times at once (duplicate emails) or repetitively (too frequently).

So as you think about permission, please be considerate. There are wide ranging audiences for your electronic communication. Some may not know you at all, and have little interest. Others may be deeply connected to your organization and be very interested in your messaging. Most will be somewhere in between.

Be sure to have permission to send, in the case of familiar contacts; and a very easy and reliable unsubscribe feature for messages sent to those who may not have interest at the present time. It is important to note that there are laws on the books of some states requiring that your unsolicited email messages contain an “Unsubscribe” link in them. Regardless of the law, this is always a good idea.

The surest method of obtaining permission is to provide a sign-up link on your website (or in an email) for subscribing to your content. You may also gather email addresses from referrals, printed media, or word of mouth. In the world of commerce, it is very common to buy lists of potential recipients of your newsletter, but that may not be practical in the real world of Charter Schools.

Content is King

Much like your website, prospective students (and parents) will read your message for content. So find a good balance between too little and too much. I have seen entire newsletters that only amount to three solid sentences of information, and I have seen multipage tomes that require a serious read. You ought to be somewhere comfortably in the middle

A common format for electronic newsletters is to publish an introductory paragraph with a catchy headline and solid, well written introductory paragraph. And then include a “Read More” link for the remainder of the article.

This allows your readers to hit the highlights, and then expand on the articles of interest. This will save space, allowing a full set of articles on a single page. Be sure to dress up your email newsletter with some nice imagery, but don’t overdo it and ensure your images are formatted for the web.

More advanced newsletter solutions will allow you to accommodate both html and text based email messages. If you don’t understand the difference, html is better if you want graphics to accompany your words. Text is, well… text only, no pictures provided.

And one last thing, don’t embed music in your electronic newsletter. That can be highly embarrassing and/or annoying. Imagine sitting quietly, catching up on your email, waiting for a meeting or event to start while reviewing an email newsletter just received. Then without warning, Bon Jovi begins blaring out of your computer speakers when you open the email from one of your favorite organizations. That’s a sure way to get an unsubscribe request, at a minimum.

Frequency

Finally, be sure to keep the frequency and consistency of your email newsletter at a reasonable level. And be sure that your system has the capacity to detect duplicate recipients, one good email newsletter is good – but more (of the same newsletter) is not better!

Be careful as you determine a publishing schedule for your email newsletter. Remember that it takes time and effort to create useful and interesting content. And consistency is important if you want to build/maintain an engaged readership. Don’t overcommit yourself to creating content, or you may find yourself trying to be creative and dilute your purpose.

Frequency is a function of content and audience. If your newsletter is to highlight this week’s events at your school, then a monthly newsletter may not be sufficient. If it is a monthly Board Report, then weekly won’t quite work either.

Summary

Periodic newsletters to your community can be a very engaging and helpful service, but do this purposefully and with planning. There are open source (free) software solutions that will provide the functionality you need, assuming your website has been designed properly. So paying for a service such as Constant Contact may not be necessary. However, if the budget allows, commercial services may be easier for you to manage. Either way, obtain permission from your recipients directly or indirectly, produce good content, and publish your newsletter at a frequency that you and your audience can maintain.

If you need guidance on which email newsletter solution is best for you, please contact us. We are always eager to help.

Online Marketing Basics - Part 1 of 3

During the crucial planning year, you need to get your marketing game on. After all, the most important measure of your success is student enrollment. And unless you are deeply connected to your proposed student population through some other non-profit association or group, that means doing some good old fashioned marketing.

There are many ways to do marketing and I don’t pretend to be a marketing expertise. My experience with those who make such claims is not favorable.  However, when it comes to the basics of online marketing, or marketing driven primarily by the Internet, there are some reasonably well established ways of doing this.

Let’s consider three areas you might want to review with respect to your Internet oriented marketing strategy, we’ll review one each week:

1. Your website as a marketing machine
2. Email marketing and online communications
3. Social media sanity

Your website as a marketing machine

 

The notion of a “well designed” website is a bit  subjective. It starts with artistic style, design elements, and color combinations created by an experienced design team. But it also assumes an underlying quality of hosting platforms, server technologies, and functionality. And it assumes dynamic and current information that is relevant to your potential site visitors.

 

There are several articles on this blog addressing website construction, but let’s set that completely aside and focus on your website purely from a marketing perspective.

 

From a marketing perspective your objective is pretty simple. Help potential students (or their parents),  find your school online, make it easy for them to engage, develop a relationship with them,  harvest or gather their contact information, and develop a process to follow up and answer their questions and guide them through enrollment. You will want to automate this process as much as possible to keep costs down.

 

Improving the ability for potential students to find your school on the Internet is often referred to as search optimization. Doing search optimization well is an ongoing challenge and consists of two general categories of activities – paid optimization (such as Pay Per Click advertising) and native or organic optimization. In my mind free is always better, but good optimization always comes at a cost. You either spend money for search optimization advertising, or you spend time placing high quality content on your website that produces high organic search results. In real life you will probably want to do both, this is particularly true for new schools.

 

One of the most frequently overlooked features that will improve organic search results is to place video on your home page. A recent study I found suggested a 1200% increase in search results by using this technique alone. In addition to that you will want to tag (label) or provide keywords called meta data on each page, use sufficient headers in your articles, label each and every image or video on your site with accurate and descriptive words,  and of course write useful content. All of these things will make it easy for search engines to properly index your site. Indexing is an ongoing process by which search engines crawl or evaluate your site and quantify relevance of your content, these measurements will determine your placement on their service.

 

There is an entire industry on the Internet, indeed an inexhaustible supply of individuals and groups who claim to have expertise in Search Engine Optimization. No doubt someone out there has to be an expert, but in every case (and we have tried more than a few) that we have hired these so called “SEO Experts”, they have collected a lot of money and without exception delivered little in the way of improved results.

 

Google and the other search engines closely guard the metrics associated with search optimization, in similar fashion Coca Cola closely guards the formulation of their products. And they (search engines) are continually changing the formula for search optimization to produce better results. Good quality content that is fresh and relevant and linked to other sites and networks will eventually produce good organic search results, in the interim you may want to do some search word advertising.

 

Want to take a simple test to see how well your school does in organic search? Just open a fresh browse and clear all of your cookies and cache, then type in a few key words that you would use to find your school (hint: don’t use your school name – that’s cheating and a prospective student would not know that information). Now count the pages of results and if you don’t appear on the first few pages, you have work to do.

 

Bottom line is that a free web site put up by one of your parent volunteers, while an admirable effort, may not garner the kind of organic search optimization you need. And with that quality of website construction, you may need to spend significantly to buy search optimization.  This of course, assumes the volunteer is not one of those hard to find SEO experts!

 

Measure your progress

 

Google analytics is no doubt the industry standard tool to measure your site traffic. But many website authoring frameworks provide their own measuring tools, often in the form of raw page counts. However you choose to measure your website traffic, do so regularly. Even with just basic page counts, you can quickly determine which content on your website provides the most interest for site visitors.

 

Don’t forget the mobile platform

 

The statistics associated with mobile devices as a share of Internet search makes a very compelling argument to optimize your website for mobile devices. Mobile access is the fastest growing segment of Internet traffic. Accordingly, it would be a very good idea to ensure that your website is mobile friendly.

 

There are several ways to do this and the techniques are outside the scope of this article, but a good start is to take a look at your website through your mobile phone or smart phone.  Then enlist your friends, with different brands of phones to do the same.  Taking a look at your site and attempting to navigate it will provide you a great deal of insight into what works and what does not.

 

The simplest way of managing the mobile access on your website is to use the right technology in the first place. Mature open source platforms, such as Word Press or Joomla do a very good job of mobile optimization right out of the box. “Build your own website” tools on many of the popular hosting companies may not do an adequate job.

 

If your budget allows, it is possible to place code on your website that senses a mobile device and redirects site visitors to a portion of your website that is designed specifically for mobile web browsers.

 

Summary

 

Your online marketing begins with a well designed and constructed website with fresh and relevant content, particularly video. Your website should be the communications hub, much like a bicycle wheel, that serves as the end point for all of your Internet communication. Invest the time and money necessary to develop the search results you need. This may include paid search word advertising, Facebook Ads, and other venues. And don’t forget the ever growing audience of mobile users.

Next week we will address email and other forms of communication that will improve your marketing reach.

New Math – How 75% = 90%, and why you should do this calculation

I have a confession to make. After 4 years of expounding the merits of the eRate program, I realized last week that my calculations were way off – well sort of.  In a recent teleconference with two new Charter School who are considering the merits of filing for Priority 2 services, the subject of discount rates came up. And my math was wrong – is yours?

The general criterion for eRate reimbursement is a measure of the free & reduced lunch population at a given school. Although this number can often be improved upon significantly, by doing household income surveys, many schools simply don’t bother.

The thinking, I presume, is that with reimbursement thresholds hovering around 90%, there is little chance of getting reimbursed for Priority 2 items – which typically include the big ticket expenditures for servers, network gear, and connectivity. Only problem is that 75% equals 90%, at least according to eRate!

Say what??? That was my reaction, too.

Yes indeed, that equation is actually correct! According to the USAC discount matrix, if 75% of your student population is economically disadvantaged (as evidenced by free and reduced lunch counts, or household surveys) then you are at a 90% discount rate!

If only my test scores in college worked on the same principal!

And consider one other interesting report. In 2010, there was no discount criteria applied to any Priority 2 services. Indeed, every school that properly filed for eRate reimbursement for FY2010-11 received that reimbursement, regardless of their discount rate.  Unconventional, yes;   possible again in this fiscally stimulated administration? Perhaps …

 Now were talking quantum physics, not just math!

So what does this have to do with your particular situation? Well, precisely nothing if you follow the normal mode of ignoring eRate reimbursement for your school.  Astonishing as this seems, that is exactly what many Charter Schools are doing – nothing.

If soomeone were to offer you a 40%-60% discount on groceries for the school cafeteria, by filing a few forms. You would surely jump at the chance. What is the logic that keeps you from doing the same for your technology expenses?

Let’s review a general list of services eligible for reimbursement:

Priority 1 Services: (always reimbursed without discount rate considerations)

•  Fiber optic internet connections
• Telephone, fax, cell phones, and other types of internet access (DSL, wireless, etc.)
• Website hosting
• Email services
• Installation and configuration of the above

Priority 2 Services: (reimbursed according to a discount rate threshold)

• Internal Connections – equipment used for transport of digital information (excluding endpoints)
• Network components – routers, firewalls, switches, decoders, hubs, etc.
• Servers – email servers or servers providing an eligible service
• Wiring – wire and cabling to connect your eligible services
• Wireless Access Points and controllers
• Basic maintenance for all the above

Both of the aforementioned schools were under the impression, that there was no point in filing for eRate – aside from the Priority 1 services that are reimbursed to all schools. It is worth noting that their perception was shaped in some measure at a state eRate training event. (And no I don’t suspect a conspiracy against charter schools.) Even more puzzling is the fact that both schools serve minority populations with normally high economic need!

 

So what have you got to lose? Well, possibly thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the unfortunate reality is, due to allocations across fiscal years and other moving measures at USAC, you will ultimately only know your eligibility by filing.

 

In these difficult financial times, it seems extraordinary that reimbursement for technology services would be so inadequately managed. No doubt that eRate is a complex, time sensitive, form intensive, and deadline driven process. But that is not an acceptable excuse.

 

Perhaps a dose of good old fashioned determination is in order. One of my favorite quotes is “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased. (Heber J. Grant) Can you really afford to not manage this opportunity?

 

But then that brings up another favorite subject – informal logic. Why go through the trouble of filing for eRate, if you can outsource it for less than the cost of the reimbursement you will receive? If you would like to have a conversation with an eRate expert, call us. And then we will refer you to an expert!

 

USAC rules prohibit service providers, which we are, from providing certain eRate functions to ensure a fair bidding process.  So I conclude with this disclaimer. The above information is intended to be general in nature and for educational purposes only. Please contact your certified (yes this is a professional designation) eRate Management Professional for information regarding your specific circumstances.

 

And you might want to do that sooner than later, the eRate filing window will close in a few short months!

 

For the official list of eligible services, go to http://www.usac.org/sl/applicants/beforeyoubegin/eligible-services-list.aspx

OneNote – The Swiss Army Knife of Collaborative Work

Being a good Boy Scout, I appreciate having a single piece of equipment that serves so many purposes. And growing up in the troop, I always admired the Swiss Army Knife with so many functions in one little package.
 
Enter OneNote, a versatile and clever piece of software that does many things on many platforms.

As you go about organizing your digital assets, there seems to always be something that doesn’t quite fit. Over the years I have attempted various ways to track snippets of information I knew would come in handy, but did not have a rational way of organizing it. And for about the same number of years, I have noticed this little program in the Microsoft Office suite – OneNote- that I really did not know what to do with.

Recently my need to organize and my curiosity, compelled by a couple of glowing reviews, caused me to take a more serious look at OneNote. Now I use it every day and it has become an indispensable tool.

One Note is a free form (this is not insignificant) program to collect, store, and share information of every imaginable type. It can do text, images, links, tables, video, and all the variants of digital content of which I am aware.  It can be designated public or private, and can be shared with as many or as few individuals as you like in a number of cloud based storage/sharing platforms.

Free form simply means that you can place your pointer on any location on a page an add content in the exact location you desire. Unlike Word, where you start at top left and work your way down the page adding words and images as you go.And once your information is upon the page, you can easily rearrange it without difficulty
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OneNote is similar in function to an old fashioned Notebook, which has tabs or dividers, and pages. And it is useful to think about it in this manner. You can use it as a scrapbook to collect newspaper articles, photographs, handwritten notes, and drawings. You can use it as a small database to track all of your user names and passwords (and make it password protected). You can create tables which will actually calculate totals, much like a spreadsheet.  Then you can organize the various pages where this information resides in a hierarchical fashion with sub pages.

All this is good, but the most impressive feature of OneNote, for me, is the ability to synchronize my collection of information across all of my endpoints. It does little good to take notes on my iPhone, that are not synced to my laptop, my desktop, or iPad. And when I make changes to a notebook in OneNote while working at my desk, I want that information available on my mobile devices as well.

And now we arrive at the point where, with a little background, you can begin to see the potential of this program in the classroom. Imagine creating an instructional document that you wish to share with your students. You have a great teaching platform with OneNote, especially if you want to collaborate with your students on the document. And I don’t mean just share the document, I refer to real time collaboration, where notes and ideas from each individual in a group are simultaneously experienced by the rest of the group.

OneNote has deep integration into the Windows desktop, with special tools that allow you to take snippets of information from your screen and place them right into one of your OneNote pages. Just press the Windows logo key on your keyboard, followed by the letter “S”. Once you define the area you wish to save, the utility prompts you to select a OneNote location.

Another handy ‘built-in’ feature is the “Print To” function within windows, which allows you to redirect any print output into a OneNote page. This is very handy when you need to make a printed copy of something, but are without a printer.

And finally, the wide variety of “Save As” functions provides a way for you to save OneNote pages in a wide variety of formats, including .pdf.

Microsoft Word is great at composing and editing documents, Excel does a great job of organizing rows and columns of numbers, and PowerPoint does a superb job of creating slide shows. But sometimes you just need a place to organize a few paragraphs, a small group of numbers, a few pictures for clarity, and then add hand written notes. Then you need the ability to share your content with others and gain valuable feedback.

OneNote is the one program you can use to do a little bit of everything.  I ignored it for years, but now use it every day. And unlike the trusty Swiss Army Knife, you can actually get OneNote through security at the airport!

Give it a try, you'll be impressed!

Tis the season to do eRate, File-a-li-la-la the forms today!

I love the Christmas season, now termed the Holiday season by those more politically correct. As a technology provider for schools, it marks the start of the annual gift giving season by the Universal Services Administrative Company for eligible technology hardware and services.

The gifts are in the form of reimbursements through the eRate program, and you might not be getting your fair share!

Like me, you may not generally favor government largesse; but  the eRate program is reasonably well run, self-funded, and designed to support the most financially disadvantaged student populations (among other institutions). Take a look at your last telephone bill – mobile or otherwise – and you will see a small fee titled Federal Universal Services Fee. That is the source of the funding – everybody pays a little.

Charter Schools, unfortunately are more likely to receive a proverbial “lump of coal” in their Christmas – woops – Holiday stockings, than traditional school's. The reason is simple, it takes a level of expertise and a significant investment of time to wade through the myriad of forms, compliances, and dates associated with the program. Many Charter Schools simply don’t have the resources to successfully do this.

What a shame!

In a nutshell, there are two broad categories of reimbursements you can receive; they are labeled in the eRate program as Priority 1 eligible services and Priority 2 eligible services. Priority 1 services consist primarily of Internet, Telephone, Email, and Website Hosting Services. Priority 2 services consist of hardware components and services used within you’re your building to connect, route, secure, and deliver technology to end users.
 
These expenses are reimbursed at a rate roughly equivalent to your free and reduced lunch count percentages. Priority 1 services are always eligible for reimbursement; Priority 2 services have discount level thresholds, technology plans, and additional requirements.

What is the easiest way to participate in this annual gift giving? It might not be as difficult as you would think.

Here are a few  things you can do to improve your chances of having a Happier eRate Holiday:

1. Identify state eRate consortiums and join them

Check with your state office of education to see if there is an eRate Consortium. If one exists, they will often handle your Priority 1 items.  In fact some states will give you a steal of a deal on broadband AND help you file the eRate forms to boot.
Give yourself plenty of time. These organizations can be quite bureaucratic and move at a snails pace, but the value proposition can be excellent.

2. Verify that your telecom provider has an eRate department

If your state does not offer broadband, your telephone company should have the resource to help you file for your eRate reimbursement. In fact, you might even find a provider that will only bill you for the unreimbursed costs of your telephone, internet, and fax lines. It is common to bundle internet service with your telephone, especially in rural areas.

Be careful, you still must comply with the eRate program for both priorities and you can easily run afoul of the rules when your telecom sales representative gets involved.

3. Don’t forget your email and webhosting costs

While normally not significant, email services and web hosting costs are always eligible for eRate reimbursement, regardless of your discount rate. If you are settling for a third rate website and the crappy email system that comes attached to it, do yourself a huge favor, upgrade your email and website system and get reimbursed for doing so. It makes the cost very reasonable, and you will likely get huge productivity improvements to boot!

4. Outsource the entire eRate filing process to a professional

The adage of “Penny wise, pound foolish” is my favorite description of those who elect not to choose door #4. In the decade of my involvement with Charter Schools, I have seen very large sums of money lost because school administrators thought they could do this on their own.

Freestanding and independent Charter Schools lack the economy of scale to compete on the eRate playing field. Traditional school districts often have full time staffers just for this purpose.
 
The most common mistake is to presume an incorrect discount rate (there are ways to improve it significantly rather than just counting free and reduced lunch percentages), then buy the prevailing wisdom that you do not qualify for the big ticket Priority 2 items. And the results are both predictable and deplorable. All it takes is a cursory search on the USAC website to demonstrate how poorly most charter schools fare in receiving Priority 2 reimbursements.

Did you know that in in 2010, every school at every discount rate received their Priority 2 funding!  There are multi-year adjustments to the funding pool, and even the most seasoned eRate professionals don’t really know where the exact cutoff will fall for Priority 2 funding.

Don't listen to the naysayers that Priority 2 funding is impossible to acheive. It's bad advice!

Summary

When you are faced with critical tasks that require a high degree of specialization, but for only small projects or periods of time, it is usually best to outsource the task. This is exactly our position about the design and engineering aspect of your technology infrastructure.  Likewise, eRate is a highly specialized process, which trained professionals can manage in a fraction of the time you would spend.

Don’t brush this matter off for another year! Locate an eRate consultant, one who is a Certified eRate Management Professional, and invest in their services. You do it for special ed, technology, finance, and many other tasks – why not for eRate.

‘Tis the season to do eRate, and have a much happier holiday… or Merry Christmas, as the case may be by getting your share of the eRate gift giving.  

Is your data in Synch or in the sink (as in down the drain)?

When it works, it’s a marvelous thing. When it doesn’t it is painful.

That was my observation this week after losing several hours of creative work that originated on my iPad and was supposed to be synched to the cloud. Somewhere between my iPad and the cumulus digitus, my files got zapped. Perhaps it was a cruel joke Apple was playing on me for daring to use a Microsoft (One Note) application on an Apple device, the iPad.

The cause was more likely the result of not following my own advice. Attempting to create content on a consumer endpoint (iPad) rather than a robust workstation did not turn out well.  Although the same thing can happen on a workstation, automatic backups make recovery possible. Not so in my case.

Do you face challenges sharing your files between end different end points and end users? It can be challenging, but once you master the process, it is very useful. Here are a few things you might want to think about.

•  Decide how you will create original documents
• Settle on a file format that is platform independent
• Use infrastructure that is device neutral
• Synchronize your programs automatically (or semi-automatically)

Let’s consider a scenario to demonstrate how this works:

 

Suppose you have documents that you need to diagram, outline, or notate, then share. This is common in the classroom where a teacher creates a lesson plan document, marks it up during a lecture, then posts the document online for students to review.

 

This is not so simple to do on your laptop or desktop (PC or Mac) alone. However, with an iPad or tablet and the right application, it’s a cinch. The problem is that much of the resources, in the form of documents, photo stock, spreadsheets, etc. exist on your laptop/desktop during the creative process; where typing text, inserting tables, or adding photos is a snap. Yet presenting that document during a lecture often means using another medium, such as an overhead or smartboard, where it is not easy to capture the doodles, drawings, diagrams, or annotations on the original document.

 

So the challenge is moving your creative work through its various stages; from your PC, to your iPad or tablet, while retaining the ability to access it on both, plus a web browser for sharing.

 

If you are simply copying an existing document, this is pretty straightforward. But that may not provide you the personalized original document you need. And it really doesn’t matter, because it is the same process described below, with a few steps taken out.

 

So let’s apply the four principles above to our scenario and see how this works:

 

Decide how you will create original documents

 

I start with Microsoft One Note as my creative solution on the desktop. It is a very clever program included in Office Professional and now part of Office 365 Web Apps. Within One note, you can clip articles, snip website pages, insert photos and notate with text on the location of my choice on the page. You can also create tables on the fly if you need to do spreadsheet-like calculations. And while you are at it, embed your video, audio, or other links.

 

One Note is truly an amazing program for organizing stuff in an electronic document on a PC or Mac. You may have another favorite or a program more oriented to the subject matter you teach. But I have not found an equivalent for doing this creative work on the iPad. While great at displaying content, the iPad is very limited with respect to creating original content.

 

Settle on a file format that is platform independent

 

Next I save my document in Adobe’s Portable Document Format. A .pdf is so common now that many don’t realize it originated as the output of Adobe Acrobat, a very powerful program used to manage documents with advanced features to transport, distribute, secure, sign, certify and otherwise manage digital documents.

 

Most of the advanced features in a .pdf are not necessary in the classroom, but the ability to create .pdf’s (as opposed to just reading them) has always been a bit challenging, due to licensing issues with Adobe – the creators of the .pdf standard. You can find an unlimited number of free readers on the internet, but you almost always have to pay (in one way or another) for software to create a .pdf.

 

The benefit of using a .pdf is the ability to view it on virtually any platform and device. Desktop, laptop, PC, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle, etc. you name a digital device and it reads a .pdf. And all kinds of websites, ftp sites, sharing services, etc., also accommodate .pdf’s.

And backing up one step, the reason I use One Note is that along with its versatility, it (like all Microsoft Office Programs) contains a “Save As” option that includes an option to save the document in a .pdf file format.

 

Use infrastructure that is device neutral

 

Once you have successfully created your document and placed it into a .pdf format, you’ll need to decide where to store it. The variety of choices in this step are mind boggling due to the sheer number of options presented in various apps available for endpoint devices, so be careful. Storing the documents is only one aspect of this process. The capacity to share, download, tag and find, and manage lifecycle or archiving are also important considerations.

 

I am not writing this article oblivious to Drop Box and Evernote, I use both. And you may know of others, there are some very clever apps and programs out there, but my platform of choice is SharePoint. The reason is simple. It is an enterprise level program with deep integration into my organization as a whole and provides a number of other important benefits aside from our discussion here.

 

SharePoint’s adoption is evident in most programs designed to synchronize your data. Just look in the setup menu and you will almost always have an option to save to a SharePoint (or WebDAV) site.

Bottom line is that SharePoint is very compatible with the other steps outlined here. And for users that are not inclined to try every new gadget program out there or are a bit technically challenged, SharePoint is very easy to use. It looks just like another folder on My Computer and saving to it is very much like saving a document to the My Documents folder.

 

Synchronize your programs automatically (or semi-automatically)

 

The final step in this document creation and display journey may very well take you back to your iPad which is synched to the cloud through one of the many clever .pdf programs. Otherwise use your desktop or laptop or tablet or smart phone or kindle, or… you get the picture. Synch your data and share it with others in your world.

 

If you choose the iPad, you’ll need a good .pdf program. Take your pick, there are dozen’s. I Like PDF Expert (by Readdle)  where I can doodle, highlight, draw circles, boxes and arrows and do all sorts of hands on notation of the document while I am lecturing from it. And with the right app, I can connect my iPad to an overhead projector or share it on a smart board for all to enjoy.

 

When my presentation is done, my document is automatically synched to the SharePoint cloud and available to the groups and individuals with whom you have shared it. And if you make changes to the document, they are available on all the endpoints.

 

Summary

 

What happened to me turned out to be failing to follow my own advice, although in fairness it wasn’t really advice if I had not yet advised it as such.  No matter, the lessons I learned have helped me to more effective. I hope you will find the ideas useful.

 

Decide upon the program you will use to create your specific content and ensure that it will allow you to "Save As" or export to .pdf. Use a .pdf document as the medium of transporting and sharing. Manage the .pdf on Sharepoint, and take advantage of any automatic synchronization of the documents.

 

Don’t feel like a dummy if you can’t figure out how to make this work on the first go around. There are a number of steps involved. But if you routinely create, share, modify, and archive documents in the process of instruction. These ideas should work for you.

 

Let us know if you other useful ideas.

How "Skype Me" is becoming "Lync Me"!

I do my fair share of international travel and am reminded, from time to time, that there are still countries where it costs an arm and both legs to make a long distance telephone call. In fact, it dawned on me the other day that I have enough grey in my hair to recall when making a long distance call in the good old US of A was quite expensive. My, how times have changed with the deregulation of telecom.

One of the most popular services evolving as a result of inexpensive computers and more widely available internet is Skype. Worldwide there are over 170 million users (2011). The reason is pretty simple, Skype provides the ability to communicate anywhere there was internet for free (to another Skype user) or for nearly free to a non Skype user/device.

So what does that have to do with your local charter school? You may be surprised!

Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 and while I don’t pretend to understand their strategic reasons in doing so, I do understand the Skype like solution they now offer as a core component of Office 365 for Education. It is called Lync 2010, soon to be Lync 2013, and is very cool!

The power of Lync is not the ability to use it as a phone system, although it is equal to or better than Skype in this regard. The real power of Lync is the clever array of additional communication capabilities it provides. And whether you are across campus, across town, or on the other side of the world, you will come to find these features indispensable.

There are four core features in Lync 2010. However, before you can fully appreciate these features, you must understand how “presence” dramatically enhances these features. Presence is the simple but powerful color coding next to your name (and photo if you desire) that designates your availability to engage in communication and guides your associates to the most appropriate form of communicating with you.

Think of presence as a virtual “Do Not Disturb” sign posted on your office door. One that changes to “Available” automatically, to “Away” if your keyboard is idle for predetermined amount of time, and it reads your Outlook Calendar, automatically setting your presence based upon meetings listed there.

We communicate in fundamentally different ways when we understand the availability of our intended audience. Presence in Lync will help your associates communicate with you more effectively.

Now let’s look at the four core features of Lync, one by one, to evaluate the potential to improve your communication capability. The features are:

1. Instant Messaging
2. Resource Sharing
3. Video Conferencing
4. Telephony

Instant Messaging

 

At first glance, Lync 2010 looks like another desktop application resembling Yahoo, MSN, or Gmail text messaging systems. Whoopee…

 

Not so fast…

 

Lync has way more capabilities just in the instant messaging department. First of all it has presence indicators that include more than a mere “online” or “offline”. Presence indications include, Available, Busy, Do Not Disturb, Be Right Back, Off Work, and Appear Away, all in context of “where I am today” displayed in your associates Lync window.

 

Instant messaging on your desktop is an indispensable tool for the classroom, especially when most schools declare classrooms as cell phone free zones, to avoid constant interruption. But by using Lync your staff can abide by the rules and IM their associates, family, and friends – all from their desktop.

 

Other Instant Messaging features include message transcripts for archiving, automatic message forwarding to email, and non-delivery notification. You can also record any Lync session for review later.

 

The new version of Lync 2013, will be integrated with all of the major social media platforms (if enabled) and in doing so can serve as the collection point for all of those important conversations.

 

Try doing all of that with Google or Yahoo messaging! 

 

Resource Sharing

 

Lync allows you to share resources with members of your team one at a time or many at a time. By resources, I mean documents, programs, or your entire desktop view. This provides a very useful teaching and collaboration platform.

 

Assume for a moment that you have a document on your desktop that you wish to show a team member. With link, you can send a document directly to anothers desktop, share a view of the document by extending your view to another, or you can share your entire desktop with another user or group of users. And you can give control of the remote user to manipulate that document, such as editing it, notating it, or working collectively on it.

 

The possibilities are endless and can extend outside of the school to students or parents as well. Indeed, the free Live@EDU services for students, is now powered by Office 365 for Education.

 

Video Conferencing

 

This feature blows my mind and if it was the sole capability of Lync 2010, it would be worth it. Oh, I keep forgetting it is free!

 

Full on video conferencing systems can be very expensive. But with a $20.00 web camera and a set of speakers, you can turn an ordinary PC into a video conferencing platform. And it requires no advance setup, notification, or subscription. Just click on a user from your list, and then click the video button and the rest is taken care of by Lync.

 

Those of you who spent $20,000 on HD video systems, don’t worry. Lync is engineered with most of the popular high definition video systems in mind, and for good reason. For professional quality video presentation, a $20.00 webcam simply won’t cut it, but Lync is very versatile and capable of handling that high definition system as well as simple webcam sessions. And the new version of Lync 2013 adds new features to video conferencing to accommodate the best possible video signal on each device.

 

On either end of the spectrum and all point in between, Lync is an excellent platform for video conferencing. Video conferencing brings a whole new level to interactions with team members and is an essential part of content delivery for the classroom.

 

Telephony

 

Although Lync can be configured as the complete public phone system for your school, that requires an on premise server and significant configuration. For schools with existing phone systems this may not be practical, but for new schools it can be a very good choice.

 

However, in a default installation, Lync is a VoIP (Voice Over Internet Phone) system that connects all of your team members (both in and out of the physical building). Call quality is very good (used Skype lately?) and again, it requires no advance setup or configuration, it works right out of the box.

The clever thing about telephony in Lync is that you don’t need to know a users phone number.

 

Simply use the search box to locate team members and click on the telephone icon. Lync rings your team member and notifies them of an inbound call. And feel free to add others to the call, it costs the same! (still free)

 

Summary

 

Lync, a component of Office 365 for Education, is a messaging and resource sharing system. It provides a connection between you and your team members allowing you to communicate real time, share documents, presentations, or complete desktops. It delivers video to your desktop either from a meeting or as a video call. It can make and receive telephone calls right to your device. And it is available on all endpoints with a browser or as an app for iOS and Android.

 

“Lync Me” certainly makes more sense in the school than “Skype Me”, give it some serious consideration.

Mind Your Manners - Use a distribution list!

One of my pet peeves is receiving an email message that contains dozens and dozens of email addresses  in the “CC”, or worse the “To” field. Sometimes the list of name is far longer than the actual message sent.  This has long been considered poor etiquette in the world of email communication, but continues to happen frequently.

The primary reason this is a no-no, aside from annoyance of format, is security. While everyone on your list is happy (presumably) to receive email from you, they may not wish to disclose their private email address to everyone else you are including. You should think twice about doing this.

So how do you send a single email message that is personally addressed, yet delivered simultaneously to a group of intended recipients, without recreating the message over and over for each recipient?  You do so through the use of a distribution list.

Distribution lists have been around for many years and found within most email systems. The idea is simple enough. You build a list of recipients in an administrative interface of some sort, you give that list a name, and create an email address associated with it. Unfortunately, there are many systems that only go this far, which is well short of the features you will need to use distribution lists successfully.

In order to fully enjoy the power of a distribution list, you need to have a few controls in place to manage it, otherwise your distribution list can become an annoyance unto itself.  Here are four things your distribution list should be capable of doing, to keep your recipients happy:

 

Private/Public access control.

 

The only thing a Spammer likes better than a valid email address, is an email that feeds a valid distribution list. Imagine their joy knowing that Viagra add gets replicated automatically through your distribution list. So be sure your distribution list has the capability of restricting email messages if the list becomes compromised. One way of doing this is a Public vs. Private setting, which restricts access to only  those individuals found on the list. I other words you should be able to make the list private, if necessary.

 

Blacklisting or White listing  

 

Occasionally your distribution list gets hijacked by one individual with an agenda. While shutting down the entire list (by making it private) is possible, you may not want to limit communication in this manner.  Be sure your distribution list capability includes the feature of adding senders to a black (disallowed) list. This will help ensure the integrity of your list, while keeping it accessible to the public at large.

 

On the other side of this scenario is a distribution list to which a user must subscribe. This is called white listing. By using an approved list of senders, such as parents in committees or volunteer capacity. You could create a large, but manageable directory of approved senders to your distribution list.

 

Moderating or Approving

 

As your distribution list grows in size or importance, you may want to ensure that each message is approved for distribution. This might be useful when conversing about sensitive subjects. This is different than white listing in that you approve specific message content as opposed to specific senders.

 

Ensure your distribution list has the capacity to require approval before messages are sent. Recognize that some view message approval as censorship - so be careful out there.

 

Message Addressing

 

One last requirement of your distribution list is message addressing. Although I have not seen this issue for some time, I have seen messages from distribution lists that displays the distribution list email address as the sender, such that your reply is automatically re-distributed. Don't go there!

 

If you want to create as self-induced  SPAM event in your organization, try using a distribution list with this deficiency. You will quickly overwhelm everyone’s inbox in a matter of a few replies. And it will be nearly impossible to follow the conversation.

 

A sophisticated distribution list system will display the original sender’s email address as the Sender, not the distribution list per se. And your reply to the original sender would not then be distributed to all on the distribution list. This is an important feature!

 

Summary

 

Distribution lists are great tools to expedite email communication to a predefined set of recipients.  This is particularly true if the messaging is primarily in one direction. Verify the email system you are using is capable of the above features. Ensure the capability to exercise administrative oversight of message traffic, then enjoy the few extra minutes each day gained from not having to select a dozen or more recipients from your contact list each time you wish to send an email to your favorite group.

The Taming of the Inbox

I had a brief, yet celebrative moment yesterday; I zeroed out my inbox! Yes, for one fleeting and shining moment it was empty.

It’s a little disconcerting that by Monday morning, it will be regenerating, but such is life for the vast majority of us who are connected. Don’t lose hope, you can manage your inbox, but it takes a little effort. And there are huge benefits! Just that small, albeit temporary, victory is just one.

A recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute found that the average knowledge worker spends 28 percent of the workweek either writing, reading, or responding to email.  While you may not be technically classified a “knowledge worker” there is likely a high correlation to being an “imparting knowledge worker”; as in a teacher or administrator at a Charter School.

My favorite Charter School Administrator recently confessed to having something like 4,000 messages in her inbox. That’s a lot! Can you beat that record?

There are hundreds of excellent articles about this subject, so let’s approach it from an Information Architecture perspective. Like my father always said, “If you start with the right set of tools, the job is much easier”. Consider a couple of tools that should assist you in taming your inbox.

Start with an enterprise class mail system

The single most important step you can take to tame your inbox is to start using a real email solution. My recommendation for education has not changed in 10 years – Microsoft Exchange based email is the gold standard of email systems. It is now available as a free service from Microsoft as a Cloud Based (hosted service) and is called Office 365 for Education.

Hosted Exchange Email is the infrastructure an organization’s email runs on, the manner in which you connect to a hosted Exchange system is entirely up to you. You can use an internet browser, a desktop or laptop client such as Outlook (Mac or PC), an iOS device such as an iPad or iPhone, or any smart phone, or tablet.

Aside from Google mail, the alternatives are not even a close second. And privacy issues alone make me shudder in using Google mail, yes even the enterprise version of Google mail. Just because you are not getting advertising, does not mean your email is not being crawled for content.

I am especially puzzled when I come across schools that are using the “free” email that is included in their webhosting account. What an oxymoron that is! There is nothing free about dealing with the SPAM, the loss of messaging control, and the wide variety of compliance issues that accompany this choice of email systems.

A hosted Exchange email system is reliable, secure, compliant, feature rich, and it’s free. What are you waiting for?

Use Instant Messaging more for short or transitory conversations

Text messaging is quickly overcoming email as the mode of communicating in the digital world, but using it in education presents unique challenges. It is a little difficult to enforce a “sterile” learning environment, free from the disruptions of personal electronic devices (PED) if the teacher is constantly checking her own text messages on a PED in the classroom. 

A much better classroom solution is Lync 2010, another free education solution from Microsoft that is far superior to text messaging than what you find on your PED. Lync 2010 provides Instant Messaging (IM) on the desktop, your laptop, and your smartphone and there is a presence indicator for all of your communication. Don’t underestimate the importance of knowing the presence or availability of your intended recipient.

In addition to IM, Lync allows you to turn your texting into a full on video conference with just a click of the mouse. And you can connect with multiple individuals at the same time. And on top of all of that, you can share documents, transfer files, and even show others what you are viewing on your desktop.

In summary, by using Lync more and email less, you will reduce the endless stream of one liner emails that land in your inbox.

Implement a connected eRM/CRM system

The best improvement I have personally implemented in my inbox taming is Microsoft Dynamics CRM; we call it Education Resource Management or eRM for Charter Schools. I can sum up my experience in four short words – “Feel Free to Delete!”

Using eRM/CRM, allows you to associate an email with a contact, a company, a support case, a contract, an order, a meeting, a telephone call, or a dozen other items, and then DELETE it. The email is retained in the eRM/CRM system and you can now refer to it in context of the information it is associated with.

The most likely reason you keep all of those silly emails in the first place is just in case you might need to refer to it later. Fair enough; but while the search function in your email program is powerful, the association of emails with the people, processes, and things in your world is much more useful.

Not ready for an eRM/CRM system? A well thought out system of folders in your email system will be very helpful.

Utilize SharePoint for document collaboration

Ever notice how many emails can be generated over just one document? You send a document for input from an associate; they make a few changes, and then send it back. Next you send it off for approval, there are a few more changes and the document comes back. And finally you send it off for publication or printing and there are the confirmations and drafts and … well, you get the picture.

One of the most inbox clogging activities we observe is using email as a document collaboration platform. As the complexity and the connectedness of your organization grow, the multiplication effect is an inbox assault. At some point you may just have to call a meeting and sit down with all of those documents and team members to sort it out.

SharePoint changes the dynamics associated with collaborative effort and it will bring great happiness to your inbox. And if you have looked at SharePoint and find it a bit clunky, then you really have not looked closely enough.

If you use the synchronization tools in SharePoint and the network mapping tools in Windows that support SharePoint, you will find that getting a document onto your SharePoint document library is a simple as dragging and dropping or saving to a designated folder on your computer.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention – it’s also free and included in Office 365 for Education.

Summary

There are countless articles, even entire websites devoted to the techniques of managing email. And some of them are excellent. However, designing an efficient Information system will have more overall impact on your inbox than techniques.

Start with an enterprise level (not a consumer grade) email system. Embrace an IM or text messaging system that is integrated in your organization. Connect your email with the people, processes, and things you deal with inside a business management system. And use SharePoint for document collaboration, sharing, and versioning.

Good luck mastering your inbox; it makes for a much more enjoyable weekend.

Help Desk Perspectives

A recent experience over the use of a help desk caused me to revisit the subject, with a little more insight. It went something like this:

After completing a major upgrade at a small (25-30 users) organization, we were anxious to get feedback about improved performance and user experience. So I instructed the office manager to provide a list of issues which would help us to quickly identify individual PC’s that might be having problems.

And this was not a casual effort without communication infrastructure. The manager had direct access to me via Instant Messaging, with presence, using Lync 2010, email, and my cell phone. We conversed about other matters routinely, in fact on a frequent basis I asked about any upgrade issues specifically and the response was “thumbs up”.

Unaware to both of us was a collection of little slips of paper, post it notes, and torn off pieces of yellow note pad pages accumulating on the bulletin board next to the refrigerator in the break room. Neither I nor the office manager had the slightest idea that a major problem was causing a significant slowdown for a large number of users.

That experience did not end well, but reinforced an important lesson about how not to manage your help desk. For a review about the benefits of a help desk, please see my earlier post here.

How you identify, communicate, prioritize, assign, and account for technical support issues makes all the difference in the world with respect to how well technology works in your school. And there are a large number of help desk systems available for you to choose from. Here are the features that I would look for in a help desk system:

Universal Communication Medium

Help desk issues need an agreed upon standard communication protocol organization wide. The most practical is email, but only if you have a robust email system that provides you synchronized messaging anywhere on any device.

Email is accountable, easily distributed, actionable within automated ticketing systems, and universally used in most schools. Little post it notes (or big ones) probably won’t meet this standard, and have you no (eco-green) shame.

Filtering and Consolidation Mechanism

With the capacity to easily fire off an email to help@yourschool.com, any help desk solution will quickly be overcome with redundant and sometimes ridiculously simple support requests (computer unplugged, network cable disconnected, etc.). So there needs to be a way of collecting daily support requests in some sort of queue, in order to quickly evaluate and act upon requests.

If fifteen teachers report that a crucial website is being blocked by your content filter (for example), then it is entirely counterproductive to think about creating fifteen support requests, or even creating a single trouble ticket for that matter. In the span of time required to create a trouble ticket, you could easily log-in to the firewall and resolve the issue. Then happily delete all fifteen emails reporting the issue!

The most common mistake in designing a help-desk system is the requirement to create a support request (case, incident, ticket, or whatever you choose to call it) for each and every issue. Where a simple notification and action request exists, most ongoing support requests can be resolved as a matter of course.

This is especially true when you are fortunate to have daily onsite technical support resources.

Escalation Process

Any technical problem can be solved with sufficient resources, co-ordination of effort, documentation of actions taken and proposed, and feedback. But, complex or persistent issues may require escalation to a more experienced team member, or an outside vendor. This is not something you can do effectively with a post-it note, or even a three ring binder.

The capacity to resolve complex support requests requires documentation that is available to all parties involved. This includes desktop support technicians, network engineers, software vendors, and most importantly – the end user.

At a minimum, the documentation should include date and time stamps, priority, resolution status, technician assignment, and notes for those involved documenting steps taken and subsequent actions required. An enormously helpful feature would be automation and integration with your internal communication systems, this will facilitate status updates, expected resolution timeframes, and resource requests.

Knowledge Base and Performance Metrics

The accumulation of knowledge about your infrastructure is an important by-product of a well-designed help-desk. Issues that repeat infrequently can be more easily resolved by referring to case notes of a previous support request. Knowledge bases can also be made available to your end users and encourage more self-support in their daily activities.

Performance metrics really speak to the effectiveness of your technical support staff. The most equitable way to measure the effectiveness of your technical support team is through the reporting that comes from the very system they use to resolve your technical support issues. If one of your technicians routinely resolves a significantly larger number of support cases (or queues) in a specified period of time, you might want to consider giving him a promotion!

Summary

Getting frustrated about the difficulty in using a help desk is understandable if it is too cumbersome, complex, and available to only a few individuals. But don’t give up, the benefits of a rational help desk are significant and worth the investment of your time and resources. It can pay big dividends.

Find a simple and reliable communication method (we recommend email) that can be used by anyone having a support request.  Incorporate a practical filtering and issue consolidation process that helps you assess priorities, gauge relative impact (many or few users), and provides a working list for your support staff. Then develop a time or severity based escalation process that formalizes support requests and starts the documentation to resolve and account for more serious issues. And finally, look more long-term at the reports coming from your help desk to assess the effectiveness of your support staff and technical support organization.

And if you really just can’t give up your yellow post it notes, do your support team a favor. Place them in a prominent position and don’t scold them when they miss the support request posted to the bulletin board in the break room next to the refrigerator they never use!

Let us know if you would like to explore ideas about how you can improve your help desk experience.

Microsoft vs. Apple – Either, And, or Both?

I spent an interesting afternoon this week with an experienced teacher and department head of a small private school. I was amazed at how effectively he wielded his Apple iPad. And as we began to discuss the way in which he used the iPad in the classroom, I was even more impressed.

I have often opined that the iPad is a great way of consuming content, but you need a PC with a real keyboard to create content. As is often the case, I was only partly correct in my thinking. True, if you are writing a lengthy article and mostly typing words into a computer, any desktop or laptop computer is far more effective that an iPad or tablet (without an attached keyboard).

But how much classroom content consists of pure text?

Today’s students are best engaged with words, images, and video – and all in an interactive fashion that allows an instructor to  emphasize, dissect, highlight, and notate. And once content is created, to quickly post it to a website where students can gain access.

For many teachers, this is an improbable task. And for many organizations this can be a difficult due to institutional policies and infrastructure limitation, but it should not be so.

While there are a number of solutions to this dilemma, it is important to realize a couple of important principles. And this is the answer to either, and, or both. You can easily create and share content with Windows based devices and Apple or iOS devices or Android devices. But any argument about which DEVICE is better is pointless and mostly a waste of time. The best device to create content on is the device YOU are comfortable creating content on.

Here are three things you should consider as you discover the best way to manage content creation and publication in your public or private web space:

1.       Does the platform, solution, or program you are proposing support all types of devices?

2.       Do you have editorial and access control and ownership of the process and the content?

3.       Does the storage facility or website provide access to all browser types?

One of the technologies we recommend is SharePoint. SharePoint is many things: a shared document repository, a public website, and a development platform. And while the core features of SharePoint are impressive, the real potential of SharePoint is its ability accommodate a very wide variety of devices.

“Accommodating a wide variety of devices” is a little vague.  By this I mean that apps built for the various devices have a specific SharePoint publishing feature built into them.

To check this out, open up one of the many apps you have on your device and see if there is not a SharePoint or WebDAV Server option for file storage. Many of the popular applications I use on my iPad and iPhone come with that functionality.

Remember that getting a document into the cloud or online is only half (or less) of the solution. You also  need to provide a link to the content you just published, provide access control, automate the placement of that content into your student’s workspace, and then provide a venue for feedback or grading in the case of a worksheet or assignment.   Oh and then there is the question of document retention, archiving, and lifespan.

Forgive me if I am overcomplicating a simple solution, but from an institutional point of vew there is a little more going on here than a simple Dropbox sharing. At least it seems to me that there should be a little more going on.

It is apparent that Microsoft has embraced quite thoroughly the consumerization of IT. This is the process by which computing becomes less and less device specific. Our infrastructure must embrace and accommodate solutions that are available to anyone at any time on pretty much any device that is internet capable, to be truly effective.

So when someone asks me whether I like Microsoft or Apple, my response is generally YES – Either, And, or Both! And that is a good place to start in having a conversation about content creation, sharing, and management.