Benefits of digital signage in education

Implementing a new digital signage network in schools can be very difficult; we get it. From speaking to many of our educational customers, we know that budgets can be a problem (even with the cheapest, most effective software you’ve ever found in ScreenCloud) and that buy-in can be even harder.

One Head of IT admitted that it's taken eight years to get buy-in but to find a digital signage solution that was fit for their school. The situation might be similar in your educational institution, but it really doesn't have to be.

The big educational benefits of digital signage for schools are very easy to see, especially if you have a lot of students and need a simple way to get everyone engaged and learning.

You don’t have to take 8 years to find the best ways to use digital signage in your school because we are going to lay it out right here. Let’s dive into the major benefits of implementing digital signage in your school or college, as well as some of the things you need to know to get started.

You can create content that students and staff truly want to see

Digital signage is a network of screens that display content deliberately to those walking by in a passive, non-intrusive way. Unlike email, handouts, lessons, and even mobile apps, the content isn’t forced, and nobody has to pay attention.

Here, you have a real opportunity to design your content in a way that grabs attention to inform students and staff. You could display general announcements that are important for day-to-day operations with engaging graphics, or more exciting activities like sports events. Well-designed content will get people to pay attention, and in today’s age of shortened attention spans, that can be everything.

Design your content with the following tips in mind:

Timely

You can create playlists and schedule them, which means that content can be fine-tuned to the day of the week or hour of the day. For example, a digital menu board at 11 am that shows the lunch menu or a fire alarm reminder at 1 pm on a Friday.

Useful

You can also keep your content useful by displaying information on room changes, staff sicknesses, upcoming exam timetables, key dates, and other relevant details. Information like this is compelling enough to get students to put down their phones and pay attention - a massive win for educators everywhere.

In fact, the only problem we’ve had reported from our customers is corridor congestion when students get too carried away absorbing messages from the screen! Here are some useful examples of school digital signage.

Engaging

The beauty of digital signage scheduling is that you can pepper the essentials with engaging content. Learning materials and school notices can be interchanged with social media streams and world news.

So on the one hand, this approach will alleviate boredom as people usually won’t lock on to content like this for longer than 8 seconds (study.) But on the other hand, it also ensures that a crucial first second or two makes the student look up and take notice.

Here are some useful content ideas a school campus could try.

Digital menu boards for mess halls

Ask any student which is the most important part of the day, and they'll probably tell you it's lunch time! Restaurant TV menu boards allow you to speed up service during the busy lunch recess with highly visible displays highlighting what's on offer, and even promoting specials and deals.

And with digital signage software you don't just need to have your menu displayed in the mess hall too. It's easy to highlight promotional menu items or special events around lunch across the school digital signage.

Encourage creativity with storytelling corners and virtual art galleries

If you really want students to pay attention, you'll need to incorporate content they care about. Ideally, a combination of visuals – pictures, and videos – with text is best for holding attention. That’s why featuring virtual art galleries is such a great idea.

You could display artwork from students followed by accompanying descriptions on your digital signs. This will celebrate student creativity, provide exposure for budding artists, and motivate other students to look out for new artwork or explore their own creative angles.

Storytelling is another great way to feature student content. Create a dedicated space where you can feature short stories, poems, and book recommendations.

Use school digital signage for wayfinding

How often do we see the same tired processes welcoming students to what is essentially their biggest next step? We get that the fanfare comes with practical and financial limitations but this is where your digital signs could come into play.

The benefit of having a fitted, digital network at your disposal is that you can use it to change the way you’ve always done things, without incurring extra cost. On the first day of school, why not create a digital signage scavenger hunt that allows new students to learn about the college campus? This engages teamwork from the jump and is much more memorable than a printed map.

In the day-to-day, digital signage can provide wayfinding messages and maps that help to direct students to places of interest or new buildings.  

Digital boards for announcements and emergencies

A digital display can be life-saving in the event of an emergency because it allows school administrators to communicate quickly with every area and campus of the school. For example, after the tragic Virginia Tech Massacre, West Virginia University installed 120 digital screens that would assist in protecting students, faculty, and staff in the event of a campus emergency.

Digital signage boards also have everyday uses for educational institutions, especially with how quickly you can change a playlist, drop in a slide, or schedule content with just a few clicks.

This gives you the space to plan strategically against the curriculum and daily learning objectives but also allows you to change the content when the occasion calls. Big open day coming up? Switch your screens to just the highlights.

The network can also be used for regular communications, in an emergency, the campus staff would have a useful tool to spread emergency alerts or safety information fast.

Here are some more ideas for your school digital display boards:

• Daily menu display of the available cafeteria foods
• Promote upcoming event schedules
• Highlight student achievements in academics, art, or sports
• Provide language options to accommodate diverse student populations
• Collaborate with students and field suggestions

Improve learning and align students with world events

One of the ways we learn about how schools can best implement digital signage is by speaking to educational institutes that have successfully integrated it. Our buddies at Merchant Taylors’ Schools, explained how they use content to align students with further learning materials:

“For example, in the English department, we have a screen that shows what’s happening within the department, mixed with general news from around the world which sparks debate and topic discussions in class. Our students stop to read the screens and the congestion in the corridors shows that they're taking note of what’s on there! The Head of Literacy then uses the screen to promote reading clubs, book clubs, literacy sessions, and all sorts of things.”

The ScreenCloud app store is filled with resources you can use to access current news and display on your screens. Some of the content you have access to include:

• Live news from the sports, business or entertainment industry
• Social media feeds, from school sources, or any other handle or page you like
• Clocks showing the time of locations around the world

This is just one example of how your digital screens can support what’s going on inside the classroom by giving students access to up-to-the-minute information.

Use digital signage systems to communicate messages that get noticed

Studies show that ‘digital natives’ i.e. our students, can switch media up to 27 times per hour. That’s a short attention span right there. If you looked out onto your campus corridors right now how many students would have their faces buried in a phone?

Here’s where a digital signage system beats most other forms of media; you’re working with a screen that students and staff are already accustomed to looking at. Nearly everything we do is digital now, which is why paper handouts and printed letters get a hard time.

If you need ideas to boost your communication efforts and deliver learning to students, feel free to use one of these:

1. Subject-specific content

You can create tailored content that varies from subject to subject and class to class. Display relevant information, and interesting facts, or provide thought-provoking questions that get students thinking and learning.

2. Math challenges

You can also use the widely accessible and attention-grabbing digital signage to post regular math challenges. These could be daily or weekly and can encourage students to think critically, improve their problem-solving skills, and maybe even collaborate.

3. Historical facts and events

A survey polled students aged 13-17 and found that only 7% consider history their favorite subject. Sounds like they could use some help.

You can incorporate historical facts, events, and timelines related to history or social studies classes to give students additional learning opportunities than what they’ve picked up in class.

Quizzes and other gamification interactions can also help to seal in the knowledge, and even get students looking forward to the next facts.

Let students learn about digital communications, marketing, and graphic design

Some schools use digital signage to empower their students to learn more about skills like graphic design and media, and then let students use those skills to create content for your digital signage.

Not only is this cost-saving (as all material is created in-house using free tools), but it also gives media students a way to measure their assignments in a ‘real world’ situation. That means they can balance educational learning with real-world experience, and that looks great on any resume.

Help your school go digital and give power to faculty members

According to Higher Ed Tech Decisions, nearly 70 percent of colleges have installed digital displays on campus. Digital signage screens are an automatic selling point for educational institutions, helping to show that you are a digital school with rounded tools to educate prospective students in and out of the classroom.

Not only that, it gives more power to faculty members to run their departments outside of their classrooms and in the additional space around them. Screens in corridors can be used to share notes, lesson plans, and reading lists.

And because a digital signage content management system like ScreenCloud is so easy to use, almost anyone can be trained in it. This reduces the heavy load, usually left to IT, and makes it much easier to create content for your screens. Staff can choose when to power on or shut down screens, and make changes quickly and easily.

Using digital signage for education: 5 best practices

We could go on and on about the benefits of using digital signage in your schools. But, we also need to talk about the best ways to implement these solutions. Because we’ve all seen organizations with screens everywhere, but they just display the same outdated content on a loop and nobody pays attention.

If you’re going to invest in some digital signage, it's to get it right and make it something that people will actually want to look at. These tips will help.

1. Choose the best digital signage software

You can’t just pick a run-of-the-mill software. It needs to be tailored for schools and colleges, with apps and features that help you quickly get things done.

You’d want standard digital signage software features like multiple integration options, ease of use, as well as the ability to create a truly integrated education space. But ideally, the digital signage solutions should also do the following:

• Offer customizable templates and layouts that allow you to share content quickly and easily
• Have multi-user access and content approval workflows so students can chip in, and have their inputs reviewed
• Allow users to make real-time updates and switch content on the fly
• Let you share various kinds of content with ease, whether it’s poems, announcements, and alerts, or student artwork.

2. Pick the right locations

Positioning is everything when it comes to digital signage. You want your school digital signage screens to be perfectly placed to maximize visibility for students and staff. Odds are, you already have some ideas for this: places where students tend to hang out, or high-traffic areas.

Some places we’ve seen schools place screens include:

• Lobbies
• Cafeterias
• Hallways
• Common areas

You also want to consider the viewing angles and sightlines of each of these digital signs. Placing them at eye level and avoiding glances or visual distractions can help make sure they have the most readability and engagement.

Read our post on digital signage plans for elementary schools to learn more.

3. Recruit student help for your content

We’ve already talked about how featuring achievements, student art, designs, and writings can help keep your content fresh and boost engagement. But you can go one step further and give students the chance to step up and manage the displays.

Your school could collaborate with teachers, club advisors, and student organizations to coordinate content submission, approval, and scheduling. You’ll also want to set up some guidelines to maintain consistency and quality across all your displays.

4. Provide training for staff

If you opt to use a service like ScreenCloud, you can be sure that staff will get the hang of things in minutes. But, the content management system is just one part of the puzzle. You could invest in graphic design training for staff so they can create custom templates that match your school’s branding on the fly.

It may also be a good idea to help people get familiar with other app integrations you might be using, like Canva and Google Slides. Thankfully, these are pretty easy to master as well.

5. Collaborate with local businesses

Including local businesses in your school’s digital signage certainly isn’t an orthodox approach. But, it can add value and a sense of authenticity to the content you display.

The obvious ideas here are showcasing sponsorship, advertisements, and partnerships. For advertisements and sponsorships, you’ll want to find businesses offering the most benefit to your students. That could be local bookstores, technology companies, or art galleries.

These businesses can offer everything from donations and mentorship programs to internship placements in exchange for some advertising space on your screens.

Other potential collaborations worth considering include:

• Local restaurants and cafes
• Environmental organizations
• IT and software companies
• Local farms and farmers' markets
• Health and fitness centers

How much does ScreenCloud education cost?

ScreenCloud’s digital signage software is optimized for educational institutions, with features that let you add unlimited users, manage as many screens as you need, and integrate relevant apps.

So whether you're managing the signage for an elementary school, or sprawling college campuses; and whether you need to promote upcoming events, lunch menus or even seasonal greetings, ScreenCloud gives you the power of the big screen to reach your audience.

At ScreenCloud, we also offer a discount to educational institutions, so get in touch.

Get started by signing up for a free trial here then give us a nod at hello@screencloud.com for your discount to be added.