Setting up digital signage in your school

Digital signage essentially involves sharing content via one or more digital displays. It’s kind of like the digital version of an old school noticeboard. For schools, it provides an easy means of sharing important messages with a wide audience, and enables you to update those messages quickly and easily.

With Airtame Cloud Plus, schools can create tailored digital signage across one or many displays, choosing from a range of different applications including Google Slides, Powerpoint, YouTube, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, and more. You can check out the full list of applications available with Airtame Cloud Plus here.

Here are some examples of how you could set up digital signage in your school using Airtame Cloud Plus.

How to set up digital signage in classrooms

There are many ways that digital signage can help improve focus and engagement in the classroom.

Sharing a class schedule with students at the beginning of a school day or lesson can help improve concentration and organization for students. Using the homescreen app, teachers can share lesson plans and priorities for the day, which students can refer to at any time. This prevents unnecessary questions around what’s coming up next, and frees up the teacher to get on with lesson schedules.

Some students may also benefit from reminders in the classroom, such as key goals or themes for the week, upcoming field trips, and even school events such as sports carnivals or public speaking competitions. Using Google Slides or Powerpoint, teachers can create custom slides to remind students of upcoming events. This is also a great way to get students excited about school initiatives and encourage involvement in extracurricular activities.

How to set up digital signage in staff rooms and meeting rooms

Teachers, IT managers and administrators working within education environments are often short on time and busy juggling multiple responsibilities at once. Digital signage is a quick, easy means of sharing reminders and important information with school staff, without needing to waste time on unnecessary meetings.

Using Airtame Cloud Plus, you can feature a Trello board which lays out the key priorities for the week, month or semester. This is a great way to encourage staff to working collectively towards shared goals and tasks, such as completing training of a new edtech tool, or getting through busy periods such as parent-teacher interviews. If Trello isn’t your thing, you might consider using applications like PowerPoint or Google Slides to share reminders with staff, such as upcoming school initiatives or specific safety protocols that need to be followed.

When it comes to individual meeting rooms, it’s useful to have an overview of when a room is already booked. Using the Room Overview app, you can showcase the availability of different meeting rooms, preventing clashes and interruptions to confidential meetings, and opening up potential for spontaneous 1:1s where a room isn’t already booked.

How to set up digital signage in reception areas and hallways

You can use digital signage to welcome students and visitors onto the school premises. Showcasing the school website, school values, or images from recent school events is a great way to create a stronger sense of community. For example, you may wish to share images from a recent school play or sports carnival using Dropbox Gallery or OneDrive Gallery. If you’d prefer to share content in video format, you could share clips from recent school events that are saved down to Dropbox Gallery or OneDrive Video.

If you wish to share a variety of different content in reception areas, you can use the Looped Content feature to set up different apps to play on loop. With this feature, you can share a range of content on screen including a Google Slide reminding visitors to practice social distancing and sanitize their hands regularly, imagery saved to Microsoft OneDrive to showcase recent school events, or a school promotional video via YouTube.

School hallways can be used to set up dynamic notice boards with digital signage, capturing the attention of students and staff as they pass through. Using Google Slides, you can share specific information about school initiatives, such house point scores or upcoming debating competitions. Many schools are also transforming gymnasiums and libraries into extended classroom spaces to accommodate social distancing. The Room Overview app can also be used on screens within hallways to communicate these temporary changes.

How to set up digital signage in cafeterias and libraries

It’s easy for school cafeterias to become loud and overcrowded if the appropriate measures and reminders aren’t in place. Digital signage is a great way to remind people of the guidelines they should follow within these types of shared spaces.

During times when there’s a heightened need for safety and hygiene practices in school cafeterias, you can use Airtame Cloud Plus to customize specific safety-related signage. For example, you can save an image to Dropbox or OneDrive Gallery and use it to inform students of their allocated time and place to eat, to wash their hands thoroughly before and after eating, and to avoid sharing food.

Libraries are usually designed to be quiet spaces for students to learn and read, without being distracted or interrupted. Using PowerPoint or Google Slides, you can remind students of the rules they need to respect within the library.

There are many different ways you can approach setting up digital signage within a school environment. If you’re interested to find out how digital signage might benefit your school, reach out to us below!

Interested? Let’s talk.