Automated Notifications

Paging, Bells, Clocks

Unique Voice Mail

Desktop Phone Services

24/7 Announcement Line

MORE DETAILS

Manually create a customized contact list that meets specific needs, and schedule your calls at convenient times or on an emergency basis.

TEC can import data from data suppliers in different formats to keep contact lists up-to-date automatically. These updates may be set to run daily, weekly, or on a schedule the customer chooses.

Other important features:

• Unlike competitors, TEC has access to thousands of telephone lines on the cloud and makes five passes through the list in an effort to deliver the message. Those who were not reached in the initial rapid call mode will have the local TEC system continue to call until they answer or until the scheduled end time is met. This greatly increases the call completion rate for each message.
• Any message that has to be delivered to more than one person can be processed through TEC in the sender's own voice for a personal touch.
• More than one recorded message can be delivered simultaneously.
• Delivers the recorded message multiple times.
• Detailed status reports of contact deliveries.

Advantage TEC

The advantage comes from our 30 years of experience in serving educators. 

When our TEC customers suggest additions or changes to our services, we listen and innovate solutions. The result is the most refined, polished, and complete communication tool available.

Here are a few of the advantages TEC provides:

ON-SITE TRAINING

WOW! Annual On-Site Training

One of TEC's important customer benefits is annual on-site training. In today's fast paced world it is almost unheard of for vendors to offer annual on-site training for customers, yet this is one of TEC's notable features. Every new school year districts may have new staff, personnel who may have a new job placement, or teachers who need a refresher using the TEC system. Each annual training is designed and scheduled to meet school staff needs. TEC will provide information on new TEC features or retrain on under-used programs so TEC usage increases annually. 

Annual on-site training will increase a staff's ability, ease, and efficiency in maintaining the highest level of communication. With TEC annual on-site training school staff will increase district communications and preform these tasks more efficiently.

STUDENT INFORMATION SYSTEM INTEGRATION

Fully Automate Student Information Updates

TEC allows the school to control how student, staff, and other contact lists are set up and maintained. TEC is capable of collecting and distributing telephone numbers to the schools' specific contact lists. TEC can populate contact files at the classroom level for teachers to keep parents connected.

TEC can import changes on a schedule that school personnel decide is most efficient for keeping data as current as possible. This TEC feature means staff are not doing double data entries to keep contact lists updated. 

EXTRA-CURRICULAR CALLS   

Extra Added Value for TEC Users

TEC offers an extra benefit with the ability to set up contact lists for extra-curricular groups to deliver important messages to members. TEC provides group leaders access to their membership lists for updating contact information securely. 

TEC automatically imports contact lists for any group that is tracked in the Student Information System (SIS). These import records insure that all extra-curricular activities are maintained in the students' permanent records.



TEC staff will train parent volunteers how to initiate notifications specific for each particular group. 

TRULY UNLIMITED - NO CATCHES, NO FINE PRINT, NO DEFINING OF WORDS

+ Unlimited Phone Numbers 

TEC offers unlimited phone numbers per student, staff, or community member. There is no restriction regarding inclusion of contacts not in the student or staff lists.

+ Unlimited Surveys 

TEC provides the ability to collect data by asking a question and having the caller press the appropriate numerical response. An example might be:

"Press 1 if you are attending the PTA meeting."

"Press 2 if you cannot attend the PTA meeting."

TEC gives the opportunity to ask a multiple choice question and record an answer. With this feature TEC provides a count of callers that selected one option or another. 

Automated Notifications

Fast, easy, efficient

The primary goal of automated notifications is to make parent alert calls faster, easier, and more efficient. Schools within a district may setup TEC message delivery schedules different from other schools in the district.

TEC integrates with software from many companies that serve the education market. Scheduled data transmissions set up between the school and the service provides TEC with up-to-date contact information for the automated calls. 

Your ability to "automate" tasks is limited only by your imagination. 

Automation for many daily notifications including:

ABSENCE CALLS

Parents' "peace of mind;" district's compliance with state laws

Ease of use during busy mornings

24-hours a day, seven days a week, TEC is available to receive absence reports. Gone are the days of fighting to get through to the school's office in the morning. Because parents can reach TEC without having to fight the busy signals, they are more likely to report the absence. More absence messages mean less time spent tracking down missing students.

LUNCH ACCOUNT BALANCE REMINDERS

TEC provides an easy way for Food Service workers to control costs

With TEC school cafeteria managers now has the ability to contact parents or guardians of low-or-negative-dollar lunch card balances. TEC can pull data from many different vendors' point-of-sale systems. Cafeteria staff set the date and time schedule for alert message deliveries. They also can establish the low-balance amount by full-pay and reduced-pay students. 

The message will provide the parent or guardian the current low balance, the student grade level, day of the week, and date of the call. The message will then suggest school strategies to bring the lunch card balance back into good standing.

Messages can be recorded professionally or using the voice of district or building staff members to make the message more personable. No harsh text-to-speech voices are used.

LIBRARY CALLS

Protect all your teaching materials

The library is a valuable asset that uses budgetary funds to fill and maintain its shelves. When media are delinquent or not returned, other students are deprived from the use of the materials. 

Automate contact messages to students who have overdue library books and fines. 

TRANSPORTATION ALERTS

TEC helps tame transportation changes

TEC can provide the Transportation Department bus route contact lists and allow the appropriate administrator to notify parents of bus delays or route changes. 

TEC can receive data from the district bus routing software and load the contact lists automatically, saving personnel time and assuring that a message reaches the right person.

Safety & Security

Notifications

24 /7 Communication tool for safe schools

In today's world safety and security of students and staff is a primary concern for school districts. Too many times we read or watch an incident at a school where students and parents are trying to communicate concerning the child's safety. The TEC system, is designed to maximize communication, and to draw needed resources from unlimited databases that offer the capability to automatically connect and used in the school district. 

TEC can automate contact list data on any schedule, from daily, weekly or other basis to receive and update databases to contact parents and guardians very quickly. TEC uses the largest cloud communication service which allows TEC to scale their calling and messaging to grow as large as TEC needs including the largest district. TEC system can make thousands of simultaneous calls so parents and guardians are not waiting to receive the latest message from the district. 

TEC pulls data from School Information Systems, Bus Tracking and Scheduling, Lunch Balances and other databases were TEC can make automated and manual scheduled calls. Our goal in the design of TEC was to reduce staff an parent time updating multiple lists and to make notifications as easy as possible. 

Safe Anonymous Tip Line

Safe schools for students staff and community.

TEC offers a safe, secure, and anonymous tip line for bullying, safety concerns or threats. The tip line allows a caller to remain anonymous or they can provide identifying information for later feedback. A caller that provided the tip can receive anonymous feedback of an item they proved. 

Once a message has been received, TEC will begin a notification process, designed by your district, to call, email, or text message the appropriate personnel. 

This notification process can escalate from the primary contact through a list of secondary and tertiary contacts until someone responds to the message in a timely manner.

 MORE DETAIL

With the TEC Anonymous Tip Line staff can now quickly receive information on bulling, sexual harassment, cheating and unsafe activities all through one coordinated system withing the district. The tip line can be used either through the phone or the web making it easy and safe to use as well as being an anonymous system. People that use the tip line do receive confidentiality updates that are anonymous. The control of feedback is up to the person that is making the call and how they wish to be involved.

Paging, Bells, Clocks

Classroom Bell System

• Efficiency and Control in your Bell System
• Easily manage bell systems with TEC
• Use phone and speaker system as alerting devices
• Pre-scheduled bell time changes

REPLACES AGING AND FAILED MECHANICAL SYSTEMS

An important and cost effective feature is that The Education Connection's (TEC) School Bell Management System is that it can easily replace your older or manual controlled bell system with new and modern Power over Ethernet (PoE) driven clocks and bells which are easy to control and maintain. 

TEC can also interface with older analog speakers and bell systems that allow you have all the benefits of an easy-to-use system or continue to use your mechanical system without having to change your infrastructure immediately. 

BELL SYSTEM CONTROL

With TEC, there is no more going to a wiring closet somewhere, in the basement, or the boiler room to adjust the bell system. You now can control the bell system from your desk top computer or tablet. TEC allows you to set up and control as many different bell configurations as you need. 

The TEC Bell Control System allows you to adjust your bell system scheduled from home before you head to school or before staff and students arrive! You avoid the confusion in starting the school day. 

Additionally, once you set your standard bell operation for all schools, you can adjust and insert a schedule change for a particular day and know that tomorrow the normal standard bell schedule will be operationally automatically. Set up a 1- or 2 - hour delay option, 1- hour delay option, a testing schedule or a special event alert. It is so easy and secure since only the parties with coded access can change the schedules.

NEW PHONE AND SPEAKER SYSTEMS

If your school infrastructure is a modern Ethernet-driven system, you now have different important options. Not only bell schedules, but also alerts and important messages can be sent with Power over Ethernet (PoE) and the school can combine systems into one easily-controlled screen. TEC can provide schools all the necessary equipment needed to increase campus safety and control in you school. You can review the product catalog, highlighted below, and see the types of speakers, clocks, and alert systems available.

Provide Private Voice Mail Contact with Parents or Guardians

We call TEC's Unique Voice Mail feature One-on-One (OOO), which is a personal, private, parent-to-teacher portal available 24/7. Parents may not always be able to contact or speak with a teacher during normal school hours. The OOO program reduces the stress between parent and teacher by being available any time of day for recording messages.

Business professionals, skilled workers on second or third shifts, police or fireman may be unable to meet with a teacher at a mutually agreeable time. There is still a need for direct communication between parent and teacher that One-on-One can fill. The time to take telephone calls or return voice mail messages is very limited for the teacher and possibly for the parent. Traditionally this has meant that teachers spend time in the evening attempting to return telephone calls from the work day.

Unique Voice Mail

Private and Confidential Communication

Using TEC's One-on-One (OOO) feature, teachers and parents can carry on two-way communications without annoying phone tag or extraneous conversation.

Teachers create private access private numbers for parents with whom they wish to communicate. Parents then are given a small instruction card that informs them how to access the private message left for them by the teacher. After listening to the teacher's message, a parent can then record a private voice response.

Once the OOO procedure is set up, the parent has 24-hour access directly to a teacher, and the teacher has made themselves accessible without giving out a home telephone number.

OOO messages have many benefits, which includes password protection, delivery confirmation, and annual message archiving.

Desktop Phone Services

Call Recording

One button call recording from beginning to end

TEC Call Recording feature allows the staff members to record instantly both sides of the entire telephone conversation by pushing one phone button. Recordings are archived in the TEC system for review by school officials, or can be forwarded to law enforcement if needed. Before the staff member's adrenaline makes it difficult to think or take notes, TEC is creating a permanent record of the call.

• Simple single button activation
• Silent operation to prevent interruptions
• Accurately records both sides of the conversation as it is happening
• Preserves the event in real-time and saves the entire conversation from answer to hang up

Telephone Paging   

Page ability to one phone or the entire district

TEC Paging broadcasts messages to select telephones in your group or every phone in the district at one time. Whether these broadcasts are utilized for morning announcements or important safety messages, paging is a basic function needed by every school.

• TEC offers an unlimited number of paging groups
• Custom / ad hoc paging groups 
• Passcode controlled access for safety
• Accessible from any phone extension
• TEC engineers can make connections to legacy speaker systems

Telephone Intercom

Hands free conversations your phone to others

TEC's telephone intercom applications allows one-to-one, hands-free conversations from phone to phone. 

You now can get instant feedback to a question, and easily locate staff or students.

• Two-way hands-free intercom conversations
• Hold unlimited conversations
• Accessible from any extension
• Passcode controlled access to telephone intercom
• TEC provides on-screen notification of missed intercom calls

Call Detail Records Reporting 

Easily access calling data through TEC

Call Detail Records (CDR) contain information about every telephone call placed or received on the district's phone system. CDR is an important tool used to manage your phone system efficiently. TEC's CDR report generator makes searching through thousands of CDR entries easy and provides a secure method to locate all the important information needed.

• TEC allows easy review of live data from the phone system
• Ability to filter by date range
• Search by any CDR data fields
• Report by easily sorting reports on one or more CDR data report fields
• You can easily print reports, export to Excel, or save them to a PDF document

TEC Directory

The Education Connection Telephone Phone Directory

TEC's Phone Directory makes it easy to search for staff members' telephone extensions. You can eliminate wasted paper and ink from printed phone directories. TEC searches all extensions in the district, or it can narrow search results to one building, making it the perfect solution for a shared Call Manager® system.

• The directory is accessible from the phone's directory button
• It allows you to search by first or last name
• It is a single button dial from search results
• You can search a single building or the entire district
• You can easily control which extensions are included in the directory

Visual Memos & Alerts

TEC's Visual Memos & Alerts provide the ability to push text messages to one phone or all phones in a building or district. Send classroom reminders or push out important safety announcements. TEC Visual Memos and Alerts can be an important component of your district safety plans.

• You can easily create and customize test messages
• The feature has passcode controlled access
• You can send a text message to one phone or a group of phones in your system
• You have the ability to use discriminating tones for announcements versus emergency messages
• NEW! Allows you to conduct various surveys or report a response

Phone Remote Control 

TEC's Phone Remote Control feature makes maintaining a VoIP phone system much easier by allowing system engineers to connect, observe and control any telephone on the network. Technicians can program phones, check phone status indicators, teach staff how to use phone functions, and watch end users perform operations. Be everywhere you need to be without leaving your desk.

• You control any phone remotely
• Review live phone screen views
• TEC offers the ability to press buttons on the remote phone including soft-keys
• Now school engineering staff can place test phone calls on the remote phone

Unified Voice Mail

The TEC On-Screen Voice Mail creates a time-efficient method of reviewing and replying to TEC Voice Mail messages. You can see who called, the date and time information, and message length on your phone screen. Play, reply to, forward, and delete messages. This feature is fully integrated with the TEC Voice Mail system

• You have the ability to access your inbound, outbound, and deleted messages
• It is easy to play, reply to, forward, and delete messages
• TEC allows you to restore deleted messages
• Quickly and easily review message details on your screen
• You have passcode controlled access

TEC Control App

Treat your desk phone to the TEC Control App, and take control of the powerful communication features found in TEC. The TEC Control App for desktop phones provides an accessible method to monitor your TEC system.

• Now you can monitor important TEC rapid notifications on your desk phone
• You have the ability to see status of recent outbound messages 
• Wherever you are, you can play last outbound Message on your phone

Makes Information Available At All Times

• Record homework assignments and sports updates for students and parents to retrieve
• Parents can report student absences 24/7
• School administrators report district public events
• Alert educational stakeholders to school closures, delays, and early dismissals
• Share building and district information announcements
• Has a parental portal to leave and retrieve Voice Mail messages
• Let parents know lunch card balances and menus
• Provides a tutorial for help on using the TEC system

LUNCH ACCOUNT BALANCE VERFICIATION

TEC provides an easy way for the Nutrition Department to keep parents informed 

Now with TEC the nutrition department can coordinate menus with all buildings, receive daily instructions from the head chef, report kitchen inventory and requests and record menus for student/parent review.

The TEC system can interface with many Food Service software products to identify lunch card balances. Using a student pass code parents can access card balances to plan for re-charging accounts. 

Calling into TEC students and parents can also check daily menu items to plan when to buy a school lunch.

The TEC system can interface with many Food Service software products to set negative balance calls and low balance reminders calls to parents to refresh the lunch balance for the child. This reduces staff time from following up and call parents about low and negative balances. With the TEC reports staff will know who has called and the results of responses.

DATA SECURITY AND RETENTION

Save records in a secure manor

The Education Connection (TEC) was developed to ensure data and information is stored safely for easy retrieval and for conforming to requirements for data storage and access. The teacher or administrator has access to all their own reports for outbound calls, texts, and voice messages. 

Calls - Data can be retrieved at any time to display call delivery outcomes for student and staff calls. Items that would interest you to follow like the time the message was received and any responses to surveys. When the educator records and schedules a message, a permanent record is started to record the contact list number and all aspects of the message delivery. Once the contact is placed, the record exists to pull up statistics on the call. The messages are always maintained even if the educator deletes or overrides the call, so the data exists in the TEC archive files, which can be brought up on your tablet or smart phone.

Voice Mail - TEC Voice mail is an important record that must be maintained as part of record retention laws, If you are a frequent user of TEC's voice mail, you have probably noticed that the message is moved to the deleted folder on your phone voice mail where you can play the file. The voice message is held throughout the school year for your convenience and use. At the end of the school year the TEC Administrator transfers all deleted calls to a DVD and deletes the voice mail file. But you can search the DVD and locate any call and replay whenever needed. Many States required teachers and administrators to save all voice mail as a permanent record and, with the TEC you have all the necessary data on file. 

Levy and Bond Issue Calls

DO YOU HAVE A BOND ISSUE OR LEVY TO PASS THIS YEAR?

Join other successful school districts by using The Education Connection’s (TEC) automatic outbound dialing feature to create a multi-level poll to glean areas of concern from the community.

The Education Connection boasts a 90% passage with its rental systems used to educate community members on the importance of passing levies and bond issues.

TEC customers enjoy free usage of our calling services. We offer our services as an in-kind donation to the district's levy committee. The committee can use TEC to place voter registration calls and even deliver messages ask for the community's support for the funding issue. 

The Committee has the ability to utilize TEC to support the funding issue because we maintain as separate system housed in our Centerville, Ohio office which is not funded by district dollars. This separate system is not operated by District tax dollars so the levy committees are able to freely utilize our communication tools and be in compliance with state election laws.

Plan for Funding Campaign Success

In the success of any endeavor is the ability to keep focused on what one CAN do. In planning a funding campaign we see school districts orchestrating the following "can do" situations with TEC partnering with them accordingly:

1) Your district CAN find out from the local board of elections the names of all registered voters in the district and match

them against your students' parents’ names.

TEC CAN organize your volunteers to perform this task.

2) Your district CAN talk with these parents and explain to them why it is important for them to be registered voters and how their vote, or lack of it, impacts them directly.

TEC CAN communicate that message to all parents to help rally and increase support.

3) Your district CAN help parents get registered to vote.

TEC CAN invite parents to visit the school office to register to vote.

4) Your district CAN determine exactly how many votes are needed to pass the campaign issue.

TEC CAN measure how many supporters your message has reached.

5) Your district CAN collect pledges of $1 or more per pro-campaign supporter who will vote in favor of the issue and utilize these pledges as funding for the campaign.

TEC CAN use the resulting list of supporters to deliver targeted campaign messages.

6) Your district CAN appoint a popular spokesperson for the campaign.

TEC CAN contact every voter in the district and deliver a consistent, “personal” message in the voice of your district’s popular spokesperson.

7) Your district CAN solicit the support of business leaders for the campaign.

TEC CAN allow a business leader to deliver a message on the importance of quality schools in attracting future businesses to the community.

8) Your district CAN respond quickly to misleading or negative information generated by those opposing the levy or bond issue.

TEC CAN provide your district direct access to the voters to explain the truth without having to pass your message through the “media filter.”

9) Your district can use TEC to identify citizens who will display campaign yard signs.

TEC CAN map those requests for easy delivery and pick up of those signs.

10) Your district CAN rent TEC for delivering timely, informational “vote for” campaign messages.

TEC CAN make it affordable and easy to deliver your message. TEC customers receive an in kind donation of this valuable service.

Sample Funding Outbound Calls

Northmont City School District

• First Contact Message 
• Message to all Parents
• Message to all registered non-parent voter
• Thank You Call

"The campaign is over and... Our community gave us a 60/40 vote of confidence... After 25,000 calls to our entire community, we felt that the message was delivered in a timely and consistent manner."

Gale T. Mabbray, Superintendent, Northmont City School District

© Copyright 2018 Insta-Info Inc. | All artwork, photos, and designs included in this website are the exclusive property of Insta-Info Inc. and may not be copied, reproduced, transferred, or sold in whole or in part without the express written consent of Insta-Info Inc.