VoIP was a revelation to the district. Teachers have become more immediately accessible to parents, who no longer have to leave messages in the main offices and hope to be available when teachers call back. And now, when a teacher or staff member moves to another location in the district, the phone and a person's number can follow along; all it requires is a simple update through software. "We know who's got that device, where they have it, where they have it plugged in," Devkota explains. In short, VoIP gave the district community a taste for location-free communications, which naturally led to the next best thing to being there: telepresence.