Friday, October 20, 2006
Small schools - cut down on phone interruptions
Here is a solution that I developed for our village Primary School, and detail here in the hope it might be of use to others.
The Situation:
A small school with a single phone line, where there are substantial parts of the week when the only staff are teaching.
The Problem:
What to do when the phone rings?
Do the staff interrupt teaching to answer the call - which will usually be non-urgent? Or do they leave it, and risk missing the occasional crucially urgent call? (Invent your own scenario for this, but as an extreme example, it might just be a hospital needing to call urgently to arrange for a child to be taken to the bedside of an injured parent)
The Solution:
Subscribe to BT's Twin Talk Service. This keeps the single phone line, but gives you an extra phone number, which rings the same line, but with a different ring pattern (single, long ring, US-style). You buy a pair of special adapters that switch phone calls depending on the ring-pattern. You then plug an answerphone into the adapter that connects calls on the "normal" number - and record a message that says:
"Sorry we can't answer your call at the moment. If you are calling during school hours, this will be because all staff are busy teaching. If you really HAVE to interrupt them, please dial again on 01xxx xxxxxx, otherwise please leave a message and we will get back to you as soon as we are free".
Then connect the adapter that answers the "special" ringtone to your phone (or phones) in the school.
When you have no admin cover, set the Answerphone ON before you start teaching. You'll hear incoming calls ring a couple of times with the normal pattern before the answerphone cuts in. If the phone rings with a single-long ring (and it will continue to ring, because the answering machine won't be getting this call) then you know it is an urgent call and you need to stop teaching and answer it.
All phones can still make outgoing calls in the normal way.
It's worked well for several years in our school.
Costs (as of October 2006) - oneoff costs of about £35 for the pair of adapters, and about £25 per year extra on your phone bill.
Links:
http://www.twintalkhelp.com/tt_main.htm for BT's TwinTalk service
http://www.beststuff.co.uk/bt_twin_talk.htm for the adapters
The Situation:
A small school with a single phone line, where there are substantial parts of the week when the only staff are teaching.
The Problem:
What to do when the phone rings?
Do the staff interrupt teaching to answer the call - which will usually be non-urgent? Or do they leave it, and risk missing the occasional crucially urgent call? (Invent your own scenario for this, but as an extreme example, it might just be a hospital needing to call urgently to arrange for a child to be taken to the bedside of an injured parent)
The Solution:
Subscribe to BT's Twin Talk Service. This keeps the single phone line, but gives you an extra phone number, which rings the same line, but with a different ring pattern (single, long ring, US-style). You buy a pair of special adapters that switch phone calls depending on the ring-pattern. You then plug an answerphone into the adapter that connects calls on the "normal" number - and record a message that says:
"Sorry we can't answer your call at the moment. If you are calling during school hours, this will be because all staff are busy teaching. If you really HAVE to interrupt them, please dial again on 01xxx xxxxxx, otherwise please leave a message and we will get back to you as soon as we are free".
Then connect the adapter that answers the "special" ringtone to your phone (or phones) in the school.
When you have no admin cover, set the Answerphone ON before you start teaching. You'll hear incoming calls ring a couple of times with the normal pattern before the answerphone cuts in. If the phone rings with a single-long ring (and it will continue to ring, because the answering machine won't be getting this call) then you know it is an urgent call and you need to stop teaching and answer it.
All phones can still make outgoing calls in the normal way.
It's worked well for several years in our school.
Costs (as of October 2006) - oneoff costs of about £35 for the pair of adapters, and about £25 per year extra on your phone bill.
Links:
http://www.twintalkhelp.com/tt_main.htm for BT's TwinTalk service
http://www.beststuff.co.uk/bt_twin_talk.htm for the adapters
# posted by John Geddes @ 8:54 am 
