Those stupid smart phones
Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 09:43AM Our district does not provide "smart" phones to any of its employees, but it does give a stipend to administrators to help offset the cost of private phones. An increasing number of both teachers and administrators are getting phones that access the web, do e-mail, and synch with online calendars and address books.
What policies and guidelines does your district have regarding support for such devices? This has become a real frustration for our tech staff since we are often asked to make these things play well with our e-mail, calendaring and address books...
Smartphone/PDA Guidelines
August 2009
An increasing number staff members have purchased or are planning to purchase “smart” phones or PDAs. The advantage of these devices is that one can access school e-mail, contact, calendars and documents when away from one's computer.
Unfortunately, there are multiple cell phone providers, dozens of models of cell phones/PDAs, and even several smart phone/PDA operating systems. And not all phones work well with the district’s e-mail system. Since these are also personally-owned devices, the district technology department can only offer very limited technical support. Our e-mail, calendar and contacts lists at this time all run on a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, an industry standard, in a standard configuration. E-mail access does not seem to be problematic for most systems, but calendars and contacts often do not work.
Before purchasing a cell phone or PDA:
- Ask the salesperson to configure and test the device with our Exchange server. (Sales persons are often more confident than knowledgeable about what their products can actually do.)
- Give the device a good test over the first week or so of ownership. Most providers have a return policy.
- Ask what the company’s software update policy is and if they will help you if our district needs to update or change its mailserver or security system.
- Test the synchronization software that works with your computer. This is how files, photos and music are imported to many devices.
You will need to provide the carrier with the following configuration information:
- Your username and password
- That the incoming mailserver address is mail.xyz.k12.mn.us
- That the outgoing mailserver needs to be that of the carrier
We will be getting some smart phones to test soon and hope to able to make a recommendation.
At this time, we have found the iPod Touch works well as a PDA, synchronizes well with our e-mail, calendar and contacts using the built in software, and connects easily to our wireless network. (This is NOT a phone, however. We have not tested the iPhone that runs only on the ATT network.)
Any practical suggestions for our department as it tries to both accomodate staff and save its sanity on this issue?
I hate cellphones for so many reasons.
Bumper Sticker from zazzle.co.uk
Reader Comments (6)
Funny you should post this today. At this VERY minute... I am having issues with managing SMART phones in the district. We also used the carrier for our outgoing SMTP service BUT this weekend the carrier yanked its SMTP server from the network. (This carrier was bought out by another vendor) We have not been given another solution. So, now I am doing a patchwork solution within the district and trying to manage the headache of different styles, different OS's, yadda yadda. I like what you have done here and I am wondering at what point districts need to purchase phones for administrators to help keep things consistent? From a technical standpoint - it is very complicated for 1 person to has to manage and learn all of these different systems just to be able to send and receive email. UGH!
Jen
I found that running my school email through Gmail (via POP retrieval) has solved a lot of problems, with Smartphones or otherwise. Doing so allows me to sync with mobile devices easier, and solves the issue of being able to access old (i.e. previously read) email online, which my district's current setup does not allow. Plus, it gives me all the added benefits of Gmail, like labels - though we know how you feel about those, Doug. ;)
I too hate cellphones. I only wish my iPod Touch had 3G access so that I could access the internet without having to depend on wifi.
Oh my, down on Twitter and on cellphones, what will be next? I appreciate your honesty and I won't be disappointed now when I see you've left my followers on Twitter as you've just unfollowed the whole lot of us. As for Smart phones. I have an iPhone, I'm hoping it will play with the district services but I'm not counting on it. You see my district network doesn't play nicely with my Apple computer so I'm not holding my breath but I can do most of the rest of the things I want with our newly available wifi and laptops so whether or not my personal device works is gravy at this point. Slowly but surely it's always more complicated than it appears at ground level. I enjoy your point of view, keeps me open to the other side of the desk.
We use Interact/First Class. Unfortunately, the only smartphones it plays nice with is the iPhone or PDAs. It does not play nice with Windows Mobile phones. I have the irritating position of using Opera Mini to get to my emails online, or constantly sync my computer and phone in order to get district emails onto my phone.
I did not think to use Google as my source of accessing my email, I will have try that! Thanks, @Caitlin!
Keep plugging at it. With the Internet constantly evolving, someone is bound to tweak something to solve this problem!
Our district does supply "smart" phones to administrators. Originally we utilized Blackberries with email via the Blackberry Internet Service. We had a very poor experience with them. When we switched to iPhones our experience has improved tremendously. Out of 175ish email accounts, we have no less than 20 iPhones (both district owned and personal devices) accessing our email server without a single issue not directly attributable to some other network issue. We do have a couple teachers that utilize a Blackberry device to access school email - but officially all personal equipment is "not supported" by our technology department. Unofficially, we will set up a personal phone for someone but if it should ever interfere with the mail server directly we would simply disable that person's mobile access. At this point, we consider mobile email a convenience, not a necessity, therefore it is not a reasonable expectation of our users to have it. On the other hand, we want to provide the services that our users (administrators, teachers, staff, students, & parents - in no particular order) want to have available to them.
Hi Jen,
I am sure you finding as we are, almost every decision made in schools today seems to have some impact on tech support. An ever growing list of responsibilities without corresponding staffing or budgets. I guess it's better than not having enough work. Job security and all that.
Thanks for the commiseration,
Doug
Hi Caitlin,
The gmail solution in certainly worth trying. My iPod Touch plays well with my personal gmail accounts, but then it seems to work well with the Exchange server too. My cell contract expires next February and I will seriously be looking at moving to ATT so I can get an iPhone. See what the LWW thinks (although she like her iPod Touch too.)
Oh, labels are growing on me. I am still concerned what the organization will look like in 5 or 10 years though!
Thanks for suggestion!
Doug
Hi Susan,
Yeah, I guess I am just getting to be a grumpy old man. I find cell phones in general annoying. One more thing that has sped up the pace of life, I guess.
If your iPhone doesn't play well with your school email, you might follow Caitlan's suggestion in the previous post about sending your school mail to a gmail account. Sounds like a work around to me.
All the best,
Doug
Hi Karlana,
Let me know if Caitlan's suggestion works for you. An ingenious work-around. And I think Windows Mobile has driven out the Palm OS so this will be a problem for lots of folks.
All the best,
Doug
Hi Brian,
Thanks for sharing your experience. I just wish iPhones working with more carriers. ATT does not have great coverage in our area. (But that may not stop me from changing next winter!)
It is very difficult for a service oriented group like a tech staff to NOT help a teacher, even when it comes to personal devices. For bigger jobs, I usually ask that the teacher hire the tech during his/her off hours for personal support. Seems to work out OK and is fair to everyone. This phone/email connectivity is sort of messy when it comes to responsibility though.
All the best,
Doug