Repton Dubai is an international school in Dubai, UAE, catering to students aged 3 to 18. The school started their digital signage journey in 2023 as an easy and engaging alternative to traditional display boards. We caught up with Guy Colnbrook, Head of Computing and Digital Literacy, to find out how TrilbyTV has helped to engage students and staff through clear, informative, and dynamic content.
A simple digital signage solution
Until 2023, Repton Dubai had used traditional display boards in corridors and classrooms. Corridor displays were created once a year for each year group, to showcase key projects and trips, while classroom displays were updated each term. The display boards were beautifully made and visually appealing but they were very time consuming to create, easily damaged and quickly became out of date.
In the summer, the school corridors underwent a renovation and Guy took this opportunity to replace the display boards with 86” screens. Initially, the school trialled Google Slides as a standalone signage option, but it didn’t always work seamlessly with the players, so they needed to find a more reliable solution.
Guy was familiar with TrilbyTV from his previous role at King’s School Rochester where he’d worked on improving and expanding the school’s digital signage. Having seen the benefits, he was keen to implement TrilbyTV at Repton.
Guy explains “TrilbyTV is the simplest system I’ve looked at and used. It’s very good value for money and it’s a site licence so you can have as many devices connected to it as possible.”
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At the moment, Repton Dubai has six screens mostly located in the corridors, although TrilbyTV is also used in the staffroom and Junior School reception. The primary purpose of TrilbyTV is to share information with students in a way that’s engaging and dynamic.
Guy says that the school uses signage to share what’s happened recently and to highlight what’s coming up. For example, they often display photos of recent trips and exciting projects that have happened in the school. One of his favourite TrilbyTV moments was when they shared pictures of the first school trip abroad after COVID restrictions were lifted. He says, “It was brilliant again just to see all of the children gathered around looking at what was happening.”
Another highlight was using the screens to announce which students had been selected for Head Girl, Head Boy and prefect roles. Students were excited to see if they, or their peers, had been selected and gathered around the screens to find out. For younger children at the school, it was an opportunity to see the roles they could aspire to in the future.
Guy explains that an important role of signage is not only to showcase student achievements, but to give them an insight into what their future at Repton Dubai could look like. Instead of learning focuses, trips and events being a mystery to younger students, they can see what they’ll be doing in the years to come and get excited about moving up through the school.
Signage is also a great way to help students organise themselves independently by displaying the school calendar as well as important reminders for things like upcoming exams. Guy says, “I think it’s also reduced emails as well. So instead of people having to be constantly emailed about what’s coming up, we can refer them to the TrilbyTV screens in our morning briefing to see what the schedule is. It works so well for children because it helps them to be autonomous as well because they can see what’s going on in the day.”
Saving staff time and boosting ownership
For staff, TrilbyTV is a huge time saver. Teachers and support staff no longer need to spend hours creating display boards, giving them time back to spend with students or other important tasks across the school.
Although the IT Department wasn’t involved in signage before TrilbyTV, they don’t need to spend a lot of time managing signage now because staff in other departments create content for the screens. This means that teachers have ownership of signage and the opportunity to showcase the work in their departments. This has been really positive because staff and students alike have been able to find out about exciting things going on across the school, that may otherwise not be widely recognised.
One of Guy’s favourite things about TrilbyTV is that it’s very easy to create professional visuals quickly. For example, the templates in the Content Catalogue let staff add their own content while keeping it neatly aligned and on-brand with the school’s colours and logo. In particular, the schools use the staff board to display staff pictures and they also use the template for their student leaders, so that everyone knows who to go to with a question or problem.
Going forwards, Repton Dubai are planning to expand their digital signage throughout the school and boarding house. When asked if he’d recommend TrilbyTV, Guy says, “absolutely, yes I would recommend TrilbyTV,” mentioning that the support is always fast and the team is very open to feedback.
If you are interested in finding out more about our digital signage platform made for education you can book a free demo session with us. You can even try out TrilbyTV by signing up for a 30-day free trial complete with support and enough time to see how it works for yourself.