We recently visited Eltham College, a leading independent school in London which has a Junior, Senior and Prep school. We caught up with Robbie Stanley-Smith and Ophelia Bush, both Learning Technologist Apprentices, who told us about their digital signage journey with TrilbyTV.
At Eltham College, communication and community are at the heart of everything they do. So when it became clear that their previous digital signage system wasn’t working how they wanted, they knew they needed to try something different. They share how democratising their digital signage across departments and providing a variety of dynamic content has transformed their communication.
The team started off by telling us about wanting to find something new after their previous digital signage solution,
“We were trying to find a better, more reliable solution. We were running on an old and quite different system, the reliability of those players was a different world. We wanted to simplify the process of distributing, importing and creating new content. Even just making content available to view and have something shown simultaneously on all the screens, wasn’t straightforward. The content was originally just for students and visitors but we wanted to start using it for everybody.”
Saving time and resources
They wanted to make their signage more reliable and move away from a management-heavy solution, Simon Thomas, Director of Technology and Digital Strategy at Eltham College, suggested exploring TrilbyTV. Ophelia told us why they needed digital signage,
“I think in this day and age being digital is one of the strongest communicative tools you can have. When you’re looking around a school if everything’s stationary you’re not going to be attracted to anything, but if you have dynamic energy in that building you have something that you can focus on. You’re going to showcase the classrooms and the work that the students have done, it all starts with that first catch and that’s the dynamic energy that TrilbyTV brings.”
One of the reasons why TrilbyTV was the obvious choice is that TrilbyTV doesn’t require the IT Department to manage it. The system they used before was complicated and stressful and now that departments are running TrilbyTV on their own, it’s been a gamechanger.
Five considerations for digital signage
Download free PDFSharing a mixture of dynamic content
A key advantage of TrilbyTV is that the system helps to simplify daily tasks and keep everything up-to-date Robbie explained why this was an important aspect,
“You want to get as far away as possible from something that’s been up on the walls for years. If the students are going around seeing photos of students who aren’t even at the school anymore, it isn’t engaging. Teachers don’t have a lot of spare time and you don’t want to be taking a lot of their time and energy to make an actual physical display. I remember when I trained as a teacher, sometimes the displays would be up for a whole year, digital signage makes it so much easier to update the content.”
Whether it’s showcasing student artwork, announcing events, or celebrating achievements, TrilbyTV allows you to visually tell the story of your school in real-time.
Departmental involvement
One of the biggest transformations has been the shift in responsibility and ownership. Teachers and departments now create and publish their own content, which in turn empowers the whole school. The responsibility has changed, before the IT department was publishing the content, now the different departments are responsible for what is shown.
Ophelia explained how using TrilbyTV has impacted different departments, “I think it fosters a really good relationship between us and other departments, we’re helping empower them rather than them feeling like we’re micromanaging every single thing that they do.”
Robbie also mentioned how using announcements has helped with whole school communication, and it’s encouraged them to communicate more between IT and Marketing.
Since introducing TrilbyTV, they’ve seen a real appetite for digital signage across the school. Music has led the way by sharing concert highlights, videos, and Instagram posts on the screens. PE is starting to use it dynamically for scheduling and announcements, and other departments are lining up to join in.
Robbie told us how they’ve seen the growth within different departments, “Music is leading the way with it, and PE want to be able to display content very dynamically, being able to change it over at the last minute. TrilbyTV being really user friendly, intuitive, and having the ability to embed video and Instagram was all very appealing.”
Favourite features and moments
Robbie appreciates the thoughtful little touches that can be used within our Smart Content, saying,
“There’s so much on the app. The different templates are so helpful and I really like the inspirational quotes and having a little bit of trivia that you didn’t know, being displayed.”
Ophelia also loves the Instagram integration, telling us, “My favourite thing was seeing Instagram embedded. I really loved going into Music and seeing the caption next to the image. It just felt fresh and it felt that this is going to set us apart from our other competitor schools: we’re going to stand out because we’ve got something that’s cutting edge. It’s really nice that TrilbyTV builds upon that collaboration, now that we’re sharing lots of content on Instagram.”
A game changer for communication
TrilbyTV has transformed how Eltham college communicates, not just outwardly to parents and visitors, but internally as well. Giving ownership to more people, to get involved and keep the screens up to date – will be a useful way to encourage engagement and interactivity. Ophelia mentioned that they’re now thinking about student involvement,
“We can now look at having students on there to upload their work directly onto TrilbyTV. So they can feel proud when we’ve looked at it, approved it and it’s on the screens instantaneously.”
Ophelia continued with, “It showcases our students a lot more than anything that we could do before, it’s really nice to have that opportunity. It also helps staff feel more encouraged to do more and be more involved in the community.”
Support and empowerment
At TrilbyTV we pride ourselves on giving support and sharing helpful information whenever we can. Ophelia told us about their experience with the TrilbyTV team,
“Everyone we have spoken to in the team has been amazing. I visited your stand at Bett, I spoke to some colleagues and the way that they phrase everything, it was with passion.”
Robbie agreed by saying “It’s user friendly, it’s easy and intuitive to use, the onboarding and training process was so smooth.”
Ophelia expanded further as to why TrilbyTV has affected how they’re working and how it’s changing the way in which the whole school communicates,
“This is the biggest step that IT has taken to encourage our users to actually feel empowered about what they’re doing. That empowerment is helping to foster a relationship between us, the teaching staff, and students.
Finally they summarised what digital signage should do, be and enable with Robbie saying “It should inspire. Pride is also important” and Ophelia saying “Be dynamic and enable communication”. They all would highly recommend TrilbyTV, with Ophelia finishing with,
“Yes, and we already are. When other schools start noticing we won’t want to recommend it because we want to keep it to ourselves and have that competitive edge, but absolutely yes.”
TrilbyTV has not only simplified communication at Eltham College but also encouraged the democratisation of content creation across departments. Now, different departments are taking ownership of their digital signage, curating content that best represents their unique activities and successes.
From simplifying IT workflows to celebrating student success, TrilbyTV has helped Eltham College build a more connected, vibrant and forward-thinking school. It was great catching up with Robbie and Ophelia and hearing about all of the different ways that TrilbyTV is making an impact at Eltham College. If you’re new to TrilbyTV and you’d like to find out more about digital signage made for education, why not book a free demo with us. You can even try out TrilbyTV by signing up for a 30-day free trial to see how it works for your school or trust.