Digital Workspace

Why Schools are Modernizing Their Bell and Paging Systems

K–12 leaders need the right infrastructure in place to modernize their communication technologies.

With 20 years in the IT field, Gabriel Adler creates workspace and collaboration solutions as a digital experience manager at CDW.

The story of bell and paging systems is part of a larger narrative around modernizing collaborative tools in schools. Modernizing collaboration tools allows schools to communicate more effectively and consistently. They want to reach students more efficiently, yet the analog bell and paging platforms they’re using are aging.

Many traditional bell and paging systems have evolved into solutions that incorporate video. Additionally, many schools today operate on dynamic schedules. Rather than the traditional nine or 10 periods in a day, they split it into block schedules or hybrid schedules that are very different. Therefore, being able to dynamically change or program their bell and paging systems to adapt to that is also an important consideration.

With all of these changes to modern bell and paging systems, K–12 tech leaders are looking for ways to bring these solutions into their interconnected IT ecosystems.

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The Right Infrastructure to Support Modern Bell and Paging Systems

A key consideration for schools upgrading their collaboration technologies is their network maturity. How modernized are their networks? Can they support an integration right away, or do they require stand-alone systems?

If a school’s network and infrastructure are modernized, we can easily layer a bell and paging system on top of that. We don’t have to think about the guts of it. We can focus instead on the peripherals such as the speakers, the video and the software platforms we will incorporate.

If a school is not at a mature state, then we’re having a larger conversation. We would need to bring in enterprise networking or data center experts to determine what needs to be overhauled from an infrastructure standpoint to create the experience the school is looking for. Without the proper infrastructure in place, schools can end up with a great solution that doesn’t run efficiently.

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Stand-Alone vs. Integrated Bell and Paging Systems

Schools have options when it comes to the type of systems they want to implement.

There are stand-alone portals, which are built by bell and paging manufacturers and can stand on their own. These can be on-premises or in the cloud, but most are hybrid solutions for redundancy purposes. This way, if schools lose external connectivity, they still have internal, on-premises versions that will allow them to still push out communications. This becomes extremely important when schools have these systems in place for physical safety.

The other option is for schools to open application programming interfaces within their platforms that allow them to integrate into larger, holistic solutions. Companies including Algo, Atlas and Advanced Network Devices give schools the ability to connect to InformaCast Fusion from Singlewire. This brings all messaging into a centralized system so K–12 leaders can press a button and push out information to everyone all at once, regardless of platform.

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Bell and Paging Systems for School Safety

Schools that are trying to put the most secure environments together are looking into bell and paging solutions. Often, they have modernized all of their other communication methods; however, they can’t easily tie a new tool into their existing analog systems, and so they need to modernize those as well.

To enhance school safety, bell and paging systems can push communication to a speaker, to a display, to an entire loudspeaker system or whatever devices are needed to get the messaging out. Modernized systems can do that.

This article is part of the ConnectIT: Bridging the Gap Between Education and Technology series.