Displaying vs Communicating: Is there a difference?

Schools are communicating constantly. Whether it’s reminders for students, updates for the staff room or messages for visitors, information needs to move quickly and clearly throughout the school day. Digital signage has become an increasingly popular way to share these messages across corridors, reception areas and communal spaces.

However, sharing information doesn’t always guarantee that it’s understood or remembered. There is a subtle (yet important!) difference between displaying information and truly communicating it.

While displaying simply puts messages in front of people, communicating is about ensuring those messages are seen, understood and have an impact. This can help schools make better use of the tools they already have and strengthen communication across the whole school.

Are your notices competing for screen time?

In many schools, digital signage starts with good intentions. Screens are installed in busy areas and quickly become a place to share everything from event reminders and timetable changes to celebration slides and safeguarding messages.

Over time though, something fairly common happens. As more teams start using the screens, the number of messages grows. Sports results, club reminders, notices from reception, wellbeing campaigns, charity events and house points can all end up competing for space. Suddenly there’s a lot being shown, but not everything is necessarily being noticed.

This is something we talk about regularly with schools using digital signage. The technology makes it easy to publish content, but effective communication needs a bit more thought behind it.

A great example of this thinking in practice comes from TrilbyTV users Myke Grimes and Victoria McManus from Caludon Castle School, who manage classroom signage with exactly this kind of intentionality.

Rather than constantly refreshing screens with new content, they moderate what goes up and how often it changes – keeping things relevant without adding to the information overload students already experience.

Prioritise your messaging

Some schools start by thinking about message priority. Not every update needs the same level of attention. A safeguarding reminder, timetable change or urgent announcement might need to appear more frequently, while celebration content or general notices can rotate more gradually throughout the day.

Others think about who the message is actually for. A reminder aimed at Sixth Form students preparing for exams doesn’t necessarily need to appear on every screen across the whole site. If they have a Common Room, why not just show this on the screen just outside in the corridor? When content is tailored to particular locations or groups, it tends to feel more relevant to the people seeing it.

These small changes in prioritisation can make a big difference. Instead of simply filling screens with information, schools start thinking more carefully about how messages are prioritised, targeted and repeated so they’re more likely to be noticed and remembered.

Now you know why, let us show you how

Once schools start thinking more intentionally about their messaging, the tools they use can make a big difference. TrilbyTV is designed to help schools move beyond simply filling screens with information and instead focus on delivering the right messages, in the right places, at the right time.

Here’s a few useful tips and features to get you started:

Scheduling content
Messages should appear at the moments they’re most relevant. For example, a school might run wellbeing reminders and attendance prompts first thing in the morning, switch to lunch menus and club sign-ups around midday, and then highlight fixtures or transport updates at the end of the day. A well-planned schedule does this automatically — so the right message reaches the right people without anyone having to think about it each week.

Categories
TrilbyTV’s categories let you tag content for easier filtering and automated playback, ensuring the right content always plays on the right screens – so students aren’t stuck watching CPD content that doesn’t apply to them!

Playlists
Playlists allow you to organise individual content items into looped collections. We always say playlists work best for spaces where content stays consistent, like a reception area with a welcome message, or for specific events like parents’ evening, showcasing photos of school life.

Don’t be too text heavy, think about design
If your signage is just a black and white screen with 300+ words on… will your audience actually read it? Young people now have access to such vibrant and engaging content, especially digitally! Schools can access Canva, and Adobe Express for free, where there’s 1000’s of eye-catching templates for any occasion.

Timing is everything
Following on from thinking about design, have you been to watch your content in action? Sometimes, you will have some ‘wordy signage’ which means you may have to increase the play time from the auto 7 seconds. Make sure you time how long it would take you to read the content fully, then set it to play for that many seconds. If content comes and goes too quickly, staff and students may end up ignoring it.

Interactive content
Using TrilbyTV Smart Content, like polls and QR codes, gives students the opportunity to engage with messages rather than just passively seeing them.

At St Peter’s CE Primary Academy, staff used polls on their TrilbyTV screens to display quick questions that could be answered by scanning a QR code. It gave pupils a simple way to share their views, but it also meant they started paying more attention to what was appearing on the screens.

Small interactive touches like this can help shift signage away from something your audience simply walks past, and towards something they actively engage with.

Now it’s your turn

Digital signage is now a familiar sight in many schools – hooray! And thinking about the difference between displaying and communicating can help schools get more from the tools they already have. With a little bit of structure and intention behind the content, those everyday screens can play a much more meaningful role in how information moves around the school.

If you’re ever stuck for content ideas, or need some extra training, remember you can always reach out to our Relationships Team by heading to the speech bubble in the bottom right hand corner of the TrilbyTV app.

If 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.