Ten cool things you can do with Lync 2010

We just completed our first migration from BPOS to the academic version of Office 365. Okay, so there is no academic version of Office 365, just academic pricing (as in mostly free). At any rate, we were anxious to show the new capabilities to one of our school partners.

Yawn… their lack of enthusiasm was underwhelming.

It turns out that Office Communicator, while present in the school for the past 9 months was rarely if ever used in the day to day operations of running the school. In fact this was the second Unified Communications solution that we enthusiastically rolled out, only to find that the users were universally unimpressed.

No doubt there was a need for better training on our part, but the biggest problem appears to be the lack of understanding about what Lync 2010 (formerly Office Communicator) offers. Most viewed it as a simple Instant Messaging client and never really bothered to even set their status, much less use the other features.

Maybe I just don’t understand the classroom environment, but the benefits to using Lync 2010 seem remarkably relevant to the classroom.  And I think it would improve communication, discipline, and security in the school immeasurably, here are 10 really cool things you can do in the classroom with Lync 2010.

1. Take attendance. No, not student attendance, but staff attendance! There is no simpler way for your staff to report present and accounted for than by setting their status when they are in their classroom ready for the day. With one quick glance you know the status of your entire organization.

2. Make announcements. Do you take into consideration how distracting the school PA system can be when you are trying to communicate to a small subset of your organization? Using Lync to communicate directly to small subsets can be done with ease and without interruption.

3. Make Phone Calls.  Are you having difficulty justifying the expense of telephones on every teacher’s desk? Use Lync instead, it is a robust VoIP system that takes “zero” real estate (space) on your desk.

4. Direct connect with parents.  Properly configured, Lync 2010 can communicate with virtually every messaging system in existence. Sometimes a quick one-liner is all it takes to resolve an issue about a student, with a parent.

5. Produce instant video recordings. Can’t afford thousand dollar IP cameras, expensive DVR servers, and all the connections? Place inexpensive web-cams on the top of each teacher’s screen and rotate them around when needed. Documenting discipline issues becomes rock solid and the principal can be watching… real time.

6. Hold virtual parent teacher conferences. Do you have difficulty scheduling and managing parent conferences? With Lync you can connect with parents in a video conference on the fly with no advance setup requirements. They can be across town or around the world and still experience face time with your staff.

7. Send lesson materials. Do you ever need a resource, such as a photo or document from the library or resource center right in the middle of class? Reach out to the media specialist and they can deliver that material right to your desktop, you won’t need to leave your desk.

8. Improve team teaching.  Improving teacher utilization is an important part of managing resources and team teaching is often part of the mix. But let’s make it a lot easier. Lync 2010 allows teachers to share their desktops (or portions thereof) with others. Imagine the rich dialogue of interaction if teacher “B” get’s plugged into the classroom with teacher “A” with just the click of a button.

9. Extend your presence via Mobile Phone.  Recently released iPhone, Android, Windows phone apps now let you set your presence on the go, and communicate with your team members via your mobile device. Good idea when you’re out running an errand on school time, not so good on the weekends – but the nice thing is that you can always set your presence, whatever it is you choose to display.

10. Instant Messaging.  Topping off the list, with the most common feature in Lync 2010, is instant messaging. It’s interesting that users who send thousands of texts per month on their cell phones fail to see the benefit of text messaging from their desktop. The difference with Lync is that by setting your status (Busy, Available, Do Not Disturb, Be Right Back, Away, etc.) your team knows whether or not to send a message and may think twice about interrupting you.

These are the immediate things that came to mind with respect to Lync 2010, there are probably a dozen others. From a larger view, the term “Unified Communications” is mostly techno-babble when used outside the technical support community.  But what it really boils down to is a set of software tools that connect people with one another using technology in ways that are convenient, deeply integrated on all devices, and driven by your stated availability.

Summary

Lync 2010 is a core piece of the Office 365 experience and offers significant communication improvements in charter schools. It allows users to communicate with team members in a variety of ways and from a wide variety of devices. By understanding the status of team members, communication can be tailored for the right time and place for delivery.

And for those schools we manage, Lync 2010 is part of our customer service experience… and our status is always “Available”.