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How to use digital signage in classrooms to replace PA systems

Screen-driven campus updates are cost-effective and far better for information retention compared to corkboard bulletin boards and loudspeakers.

ScreenCloud Post

There are few classrooms left in the world without a screen. According to the US Department of Education, “Forty-five percent of schools reported having a computer for each student” in 2020. In the UK, 48% of primary schools have more than one laptop for every four students.

So, if you want students to pay attention to what you have to say, use a screen. For teachers and educators, that’s been a relatively easy transition. All they had to do was swap transparent slides for overhead projectors with HDMI cables and PowerPoint lessons. But for school administrators and head office staff making announcements, ditching the PA system is a harder sell.

Broadcasting a quick schoolwide update has always been a piece of cake. Turn on the mic, read your announcement, turn off the mic. That’s it. Sure, some students missed it because they were wearing headphones, talking to their friends, or sleeping, but the rest heard it. Then again, research tells us that auditory information is harder to retain than visual information

With the right software, school administrators and head office staff can quickly and easily update classroom display screens and classroom door signage to share announcements, room changes, and other information that everyone will see and remember.

Rolling out digital signage in classrooms and hallways

Many schools already have everything they need to update campus screens with a few clicks from a head office computer. Digital signage apps like ScreenCloud work with virtually any display hardware that runs or is connected to a device running Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, or ChromeOS. So, assuming your classrooms already have internet-connected TVs, projectors, or whiteboards, all you have to do is download the app and connect the display to your account. 

From there, you could name each screen based on its location, and group screens based on things like bell schedule, classroom subject, grade level, or anything else that would streamline sending the right updates to the right rooms. You might, for example, have one channel with content just for freshmen classrooms and another for seniors. Or one playlist for the east side campus and another for the west side of things.

Of course, teachers will never get on board if they can’t limit signage distractions while they’re teaching. Announcements could be scheduled to only play during breaks and passing times, so educators don’t have to think about turning signage on or off. Or there are features like ScreenCloud’s Broadcast, which overrides scheduled playlists to stream video from a laptop or desktop. So as long as a teacher is presenting, interruptions would be limited to emergency announcements. 

And, of course, there’s always the option to mount signage somewhere other than the front of the classroom, like just inside or outside the door. That would be best for signage on college campuses and other facilities where room assignments and schedules change throughout the day.

 

Updating content for classrooms across an entire school can snowball into a time-consuming project. In most cases, account owners will want to delegate playlist management to a few different people, each with their own signage account.

Different user roles was exactly what convinced Brentwood School Communications Assistant Director Meredith Storrs to make the transition. “Our school is split across a West and East Campus…We were looking for a digital signage tool that allowed different contributors across the school to manage their own screens independently yet enabled our department to approve the content remotely.”

A school could have one person handling announcements pertaining to school activities, someone else posting sport team recaps, and yet another staffer on deck for student recognition. How digital signage for education is structured depends entirely on what you want to push to your screens and what you hope it will accomplish.

Ideas for classroom signage that students pay attention to

Every school will have unique content needs and plans. But they’re not always immediately obvious. It’s often best to start small, transposing PA announcements to digital bulletin boards. Then, let things grow and evolve naturally as teachers, students, and staff request and suggest other types of content. Here are a few popular ideas to get you started:

  • Event updates: Type out a quick message in an app like Noticeboard 2.0 and let your signage take care of the design side of things.
  • Holiday countdowns: Give ScreenCloud a date and time, and it’ll automatically generate an animated slide showing how many days and hours are left.
  • Student photos: Connect a Dropbox folder or upload images to showcase what’s been happening around campus recently.
  • Extracurricular schedules: Sync Outlook and Google Calendar events to your signage so students when and where activities are taking place.
  • QR code surveys and forms: Start gathering feedback by typing in a question and pasting a link to a form that will be converted into a scannable code.
  • New teacher announcements: Introduce new staff to the school with a photo and a quick bio.
  • Campus directories: Direct students, staff, and visitors to the right room with tools that turn a basic list of locations into branded wayfinding slides.
  • Cafeteria menus: Show students the day’s menu during the periods before the lunch bell.

Leslee Hussin from North Valley Baptist Schools uses ScreenCloud to “recognize student achievement, display student photography and other digital projects, and to celebrate student and staff birthdays and milestones. I tell my media team (comprised of high school sophomores and juniors) that our goal is to inform and educate the student body.”

For schools with a dedicated IT expert on campus, there are a few routes for developing more advanced and automated classroom signage (this article for network admins goes into more detail). For example, someone with a technical background could set up your screens to interrupt whatever is playing when there are severe weather alerts. Or create a scrolling sidebar that shows photos and info about campus visitors.

Digital signage for schools: Costs, upkeep, and security

Most digital signage software charges a flat monthly rate based on the number of screens displaying your content. That means you can add as many announcements, photos, and animations as you want, without having to worry about ballooning costs.

When evaluating different apps and options, Nigel Price from Merchant Taylors' Schools found that most “were too costly, especially from the player point of view and licensing costs. That's why when I stumbled across ScreenCloud I was so pleased as their solution was very easy to use and cost-effective - even before the educational discount that they offer to schools…our costs were the screens with Android player built in, or a screen we already had plus a tiny, cheap Amazon Fire TV Stick.”

If you already have screens and media players lying around, the subscription cost is all you have to budget for. And since most hardware should last at least four years, replacements don’t add much to the overall cost. Upkeep, other than content creation, typically doesn’t require much more than the occasional software update or network troubleshooting. 

Of course, in any educational setting, student privacy is going to be a primary concern. But as long as teachers and office staff don’t add personal details about students to your signage, FERPA and COPPA compliance shouldn’t be an issue. 

If you’re using consumer media players like Fire TV Sticks or Chromecasts, your IT team might have to jump through a couple of hoops to make sure that students can’t connect to the screens and cast their own content. There are technical solutions to this, or the option to simply purchase more security-forward hardware like the Station P1 Pro, which only costs an extra $40 or so compared to cheap consumer media players.

More school displays and sign boards, more engaged students

Anything you can create on a laptop or desktop, you can push out to all the screens on campus. Content that will get students looking up from their phones and excited to be a part of your school’s activities and events. You’ve probably already got most of the hardware already set up in classrooms, and the administrative staff to update them. All you need is the software to make it happen.

Grab your 14-day free ScreenCloud trial today to get started. Then, when you’re ready to invest in better campus communications, ask about our discount for non-profit organizations to make sure you’re getting the best possible deal.

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