5 Examples of School Digital Signage
Digital signage is revolutionizing the ways that businesses all across the United States are conducting business, but the great advantages that come from digital signage are not limited to businesses that are selling commodities.
Many businesses and institutions in the public and private sector can benefit from digital signage and schools are one of those institutions that can benefit the most, especially because managing a school often means managing a great number of people (both students and adults alike).
In this article, we go over five of the greatest benefits that a school can expect to get from instituting a digital signage system in their establishment.
What is Digital Signage?
Before we get into the weeds with some great examples of school digital signage, we should elucidate what we are actually talking about when we talk about digital signage.
Simply put, digital signage refers to the use of digital screens in conjunction with digital signage software and digital signage hardware, to display content. From a wide angled perspective, it really is that simple. But we should not let the simplicity of digital signage as a concept lead us to believe that it leads to anything by startling results.
One of the most powerful features of digital signage is that it allows businesses or institutions like schools to display a highly dynamic and vast amount of content. Some examples of the sheer breadth of content available with digital signage should suffice to give you a picture.
Digital signage can display text, high-quality images, videos, animations, wayfinding directions, digital menu boards, PSAs, interactive apps, graphs, informational visuals, employee communications, and so much more. With all of these tools at your disposal, a school can really make the most of what they are displaying to students, parents, teachers, and administrators alike.
Another factor that makes digital signage such a powerful tool is the hardware aspect: that is, the screens that you can use to display your digital signage content. There are a wide variety of screens that you can use, allowing you to strategically deploy the right screen for whatever purpose you have at hand.
Some examples of the types of screens that a school can use for digital signage include consumer-grade TVs, commercial-grade display screens, weather-proofed outdoor digital signage screens, LED walls, vertical displays, digital signage kiosks, interactive touch-screens, tablets, and even billboards.
As you can probably tell, there are tons of creative ways that a school can make digital signage work for them, and when done using best practices, the digital signage will inevitably work for you.
So now that we have got some of the basics of digital signage down, let’s talk about 5 of the best examples of school digital signage.
5 Great Examples of School Digital Signage
1. Outdoor Digital Signage
Many schools display signs outside of their establishment. In many cases, the sign will have the school logo, as well as some important information, such as upcoming events or notifications of school cancellation.
In many cases, a school may feel fine with the signage option that they have chosen, but the fact is that there are tons of advantages to upgrading the signs outside of your establishment.
Whether a school is private or public, school administrators want to make sure that the image that their school presents to the world is the absolute best that it can be. The fact is, just about any school has the typical traditional sign, and it does not make your school stand out.
With digital signage, however, a school can display eye-catching and visually pleasing graphics on their outdoor signs with the help of videos, images, text, and animations. The school mascot might be dancing, or the school might be celebrating an important day in their history. Whatever the information that you want to display, you can do it a lot better with digital signage.
Another reason that outdoor digital signage is great for schools is that it is highly customizable. When a change needs to be made to a traditional school sign, this can cost a lot of money for replacement or customization. However, with digital signage, you do not need to change anything except for the graphics on the screen, and this at little or no cost.
Using digital signs for school outdoor digital signage can go a long way in making your school appear more modern and appealing. It can help keep students, parents, and community members informed, and all of this can be done in creative and customizable ways.
2. Use Interactive Digital Signage for Student Feedback and Engagement
Schools aim at providing a stellar education to students, but just as important is to provide an agreeable environment for students to spend many of the hours of their days in. Because of this, it is vitally important that schools get feedback from the actual students that are enrolled in the school.
Now, getting honest feedback from students can often be very difficult. It is not ideal for teachers to have to pass out polls and surveys during valuable class time, not to mention the hazard of dealing with hundreds of papers in sometimes unintelligible handwriting.
However, there are other options that will actually increase student engagement in helping to constructively improve the school for themselves, their classmates, and their teachers. This is really where the right digital signage can shine.
Schools can post interactive digital signage in high traffic areas around the school, where students can give feedback on their various experiences at school. This method will make it more likely that students will actually participate, and it will avoid the hassle of having to deal with paper polls. Instead, you can store the data right into a database.
For example, you could have an interactive digital signage set up in the lunchroom. There are many different questions that you could ask students. For example, you might ask if there is anything they found particularly satisfactory or unsatisfactory about their lunch experience.
But questions do not need to be localized to the locations that the digital signs are placed, and this is a great way to foster engagement among the student body and get real feedback about how school administrators can improve their school.
3. Digital Signage for Important Announcements and Information
Many schools still convey their important announcements over the PA system, but there are a vast amount of people that comprehend information better when it is presented visually. Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages to visual communication, but there is absolutely no question that visually communicating with students can be highly effective.
Many schools now have screens in classrooms or in high traffic areas of the school. Using digital signage, you can make eye-catching visuals to properly convey the right information to students. Because if you are putting the information out there, then it's more than likely that you actually want students and staff members to see it.
This is why using digital signage to visually communicate important information is so important. Moreover, with digital signage, you have so many visual mediums to work with, such as video, text, images, and animations, that you can be sure to get the message across in the most powerful and comprehensive way.
The fact is that one of the most overlooked aspects of running a school is proper communication with students. If students feel like they are being involved in what is going on in the school, then this will lead to a much happier and more engaged student cohort.
4. Wayfinding Directions
It’s no secret that the buildings for many modern schools are incredibly large, with the need to accommodate an ever greater student cohort. Moreover, many schools are not exactly known for being easy places to navigate.
The difficulty in navigating a school is not only a challenge for the students who attend school on the premises, but also for visitors. Ultimately, the goal of school administrators should be to make sure that navigating within and outside the school walls is as seamless as possible. If administrators can achieve this, then they will surely make a lot of people happy.
When it comes to wayfinding directions inside of the school building premises, many schools can greatly benefit from a digital building directory. With a digital building directory, people can search on a screen for the location that they are looking for and receive directions on how to get there. This makes navigation through the school much easier within just a few steps inside the premises.
In addition to a building directory, people trying to navigate the building or buildings can greatly benefit from digital wayfinding material throughout the halls and in high traffic areas. Rather than a traditional sign, digital signs are much better at capturing the onlookers attention, as well as communicating essential information in a visually pleasing and comprehensible way.
It’s no wonder that so many schools are turning their wayfinding digital. Of course, wayfinding is often needed outside of the building as well. Many schools have facilities like football fields, basketball courts, and tennis courts.
Fans trying to attend the big match will greatly appreciate it if they have a clear digital sign helping them find their way, and parents picking up their children from sports practice or club meetings will also find outdoor digital wayfinding incredibly helpful.
5. Use Digital Signage to Highlight High Performing Staff and Students
One way to increase the quality of a person’s work is to make sure that you show that the work is appreciated and valued. When others see that good work is valued, they may very well try to strive for the same.
Highlighting teachers of the week or students who have attained some type of achievement can be a great way to boost morale and encourage excellence in everyone else. This is why programs like teacher of the week exist.
However, often, people do not give announcements about teacher of the week very much attention. This is largely because these announcements do not effectively employ the tools available to promote these programs.
With digital signage, you can be sure that everyone will see those who school administrators choose to highlight. With high quality screens, you can champion the achievements of students and staff alike.
Moreover, with digital signage, you do not have to worry about the cost of printing new posters. If there is a student, or teacher, or club that has done something worth showing off, then you can simply convey that information through digital means and not have to worry about all the hassle, which would not garner nearly as much attention anyways.
This also ties into one of the previous examples we cited. We talked about how schools can use interactive digital screens to get student feedback and improve the school.
Well, another way that schools can get students more involved is to get their feedback on what faculty members they think deserve their time in the spotlight. With a well integrated digital signage system, all of this can become seamless, to everyone’s benefit.
Optimizing the Modern School with Digital Signage
Digital signage is a truly revolutionary tool for businesses and institutions of all kinds, and schools are certainly not an exception. With its ability to display highly dynamic content on a variety of different screens, there are simply countless ways that digital signage can be used creatively to benefit the school environment.
In this article, we have merely listed 5 great examples of school digital signage, but the truth is that the potential for this technology within a school ecosystem is essentially boundless. Once your school integrates a digital signage system, you can be sure to see happier students, employees, parents, and community members.
The fact is, so much that makes a school a great school is not just the quality of instruction. It is also the environment that it creates for students and teachers alike. In an environment where students want to be engaged and students and teacher’s lives are made easier, learning and teaching are made far easier.