If only there was some way to

Pigeon carrier? Oh wait, Harry Potter uses an Owl!

Haven't you seen the Geico commercial with the vacuum tubes... that's deffinately the way to go.

I like the little droids they have on the death star. Put the note in the droid - tell it who to deliver it to and off it goes - unless it meets a Wookie - then they abandon the mission and run the other way.

Isn't that what kids are for...since they're not necessary for changing the channel on the tv..?

Yes that is what most teacher do who cannot stand a student. They give them reasons to get out of their classroom and come to your room for some lame reason. When a simple email, IM, TEXT, leave the message in the office mail box, or any of the things posted above would be better.

I have decided I will tie my scraps of paper to rocks and throw them at people.

There may be reasons your IT folks don't want IM software like Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, et al. on their networks, all of which would be valid reasons. The biggest reason would be security. They present an attack vector to the outside world.

By the same token, they may not want to pony up for Microsoft Office Communicator, which would likely be a pretty hefty license fee, even for a school district. I opted to deploy Openfire/Spark at my company. Openfire is the server, and Spark is the client which can be deployed to the workstations around the company.

It integrates with Active Directory, and will automatically populate user lists when so integrated, so that everyone in the company can show up in the Spark client. It is internal to the company network only, and the best part is that it's free. You should suggest it to your IT department, because communication is key to running any organization, which is the crux of your original post and the source of a lot of frustration within many organizations.

It's just my yearly complaint about people who act like they do not know how to use email because they are scared of the INTERNETS. plus work.

Vol - I just wanted to say thanks for the Openfire/Spark tip! We are testing it now and will likely go for a full deployment after the first of the year. It works great and is super simple to use. Been looking for a low cost internal IM solution for a little while now and I think you may have just saved the day.

Thanks again!

Glad to help. There are a couple small issues, but for the price... it's a beautiful solution. Effective communication is key to running any business, and it's a great tool to help enable that.

I Deployed OpenFire at my last Job , I loved it, 7 Locations with close to 300 Employees , It was nice to be able to IM some in a different Dept that was Across town 🙂