We recently visited Park House School in Newbury, which is part of the Greenshaw Learning Trust and met with Dominic Hinton, the IT manager at the school. Whilst being shown around and hearing about their digital signage journey so far, Dominic began by telling us the key focuses with the screens,
“We are advertising to the staff, students and parents, it’s great that they’re noticing the content we are displaying and our social media feeds on the screens. We’re getting more engagement overall, students are now stopping, looking and taking notice of what is being shown. The screens are a conversation piece and it helps everyone keep up to date with what’s going on.”
Making an impression
Dominic told us that the school has a base profile for all of the screens that show core focus content across the whole site. Each screen differs slightly so that students and staff notice the content more, as certain things will only show on one screen and not on another. Their reception screen gives an overview of the school, it has their Instagram feeds, which are updated regularly with engaging content and fun photos. Dominic said,
“Having Instagram integrated is great, when photographs are taken and uploaded it pushes the word out about what’s going on within the school. Quite a lot of people have actually started following our Instagram since we’ve been displaying the content on the screens. We are trying to move things forward as a whole school, after integrating social media it’s led on to other things, such as creating weekly YouTube videos that the parents can watch.”
For other areas such as the staff room, they’re trying to encourage staff to put more notices on the screen. Dominic told us how it helps for briefings first thing in the morning, after the briefing the screens then fire up with the information which is then displayed around the site so the students are relayed relevant key points too.
Dominic went on to tell us about how TrilbyTV has helped with displaying specific content and how it can be helpful at events,
“Showcasing events has been good because of the scheduling feature, last year we had a sports awards night and on two screens we had it scheduled upon arrival to say a welcome message. Then at the end of the evening it changed to say ‘Have a good evening and a safe journey home.’ It was nice to have something display content that looked professional and worked seamlessly. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback on it and it was a nice finishing touch that worked well.”
Themed and area specific content
For different parts of the school, the content is tailored to the area. The library is a great example for this, Dominic told us about how the librarian makes the most of the screens in that area,
“We have specific themes with the content and books on display in the library which last for a few weeks: one of the last focuses we had was World book day. We have video clips showing on the screens so the students get an engaging experience, the library feed also includes a PowerPoint from the headteacher. Some of the teachers also like to use Google slides, it’s easy for them to have their content on there and they adjust it in real time. It’s a format they know, they trust and works well.”
Getting students involved
The idea for the school is to get more and more staff and students excited about using digital signage, it’s about creating positivity, sharing the successes and encouraging everyone, getting more people involved and creating content. IT can still assist if it needs working on or if someone needs something more bespoke but they’re not running it as such. It’s given the onus to the people that want to use it, spreading and sharing ownership across the school. Dominic told us,
“It would be great to get student groups involved and start using the screens for content they want to see. I’m in talks to hopefully get some sixth formers using it, we have a sixth form lead team, so students that are running the house groups, student councils and organising school discos. We’re trying to teach and encourage them so that they can promote and show what they want to see on the screens.”
They’re also exploring how to make things more interactive for everyone,
“We’re trying out different things with streaming and exploring what more we can do with events. Seeing what we can try out with sports days and if we can make the screens more interactive. Giving the data straight over to the students and sharing that information across the site, even when they’re all in different locations. It’s also nice being able to have QR codes on the screens to get feedback from the events.”
Keeping the momentum going
The key to having engaging digital signage is to keep it ever evolving and trying out different things, making sure the content is fresh and up to date. Dominic explained how some of the teachers like to create their content,
“One of the English teachers wanted to create something that encouraged students to come to clubs, we found that using Google slides was the easiest way to showcase this. It’s one page that she puts her own graphics and information into, using templates if needed then adds it to the feed, it’s then displayed live straight away via TrilbyTV.”
Sustainability is key
Dominic told us some of the main reasons for choosing TrilbyTV,
“We’re trying to encourage everyone to try and cut down on creating posters. In education we seem to love using paper but we’re just trying to use digital displays to reduce the amount used overall. It also saves so much time, rather than having lots of posters up that need to get distributed and then taken down once that event is finished, the screen content can be tweaked and it’s updated, it’s as easy as that.”
“The price point is great and it saves our time. We can operate all our TVs from a central location now, we schedule events so we don’t even have to be on site to switch it over. For parents evenings the team that has been working on the content can schedule what’s needed for that evening, finish their working day and know that it’s in safe hands and that it will work.”
With their previous digital signage solution they only had 3 screens, which weren’t being refreshed enough and the students weren’t noticing them. Whereas now with more screens and TrilbyTV they can see it making an impact. For example, down by the gym Dominic told us how there’s been people queuing around the TV to check if their name is on the screen to see if they’re on the team or not.
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Book free DemoOne of their favourite features is the Content Catalogue, Dominic said that it’s nice to have ready-made content available that can be quickly grabbed, put onto the screens and is purposeful. It has also inspired some teachers to create their own content for historic and cultural events. Another highlight is that they can use TrilbyTV via a URL, even if an area might not physically have a digital screen there, for special events they can still run laptops or suitable devices to show content in that space.
Dominic explained what makes TrilbyTV different from other digital signage solutions,
“For me it’s the simplicity, it’s an easy interface and is simple to work with. I know I can show staff once or twice and I can leave them to it. With TrilbyTV, it just works, the staff really enjoy it and they’ve taken it on board. Digital signage should be engaging, fun and effective, being in education it’s about creating an impact so people will want to look at the screens and keep going back to them.”
“It’s great noticing the students standing and watching the screens to see the latest things going on. I would definitely recommend TrilbyTV, it’s made life a lot easier. The experience has been brilliant, the support guides have been really helpful, and the team are also so quick to respond if we need any help. TrilbyTV is simple to use, saves time and effort overall. It’s just worth it.”
Thank you to Dominic for showing us around the digital signage at Park House School, it was great to see and hear all of the amazing things they have created for their screens with TrilbyTV. If you are not already using TrilbyTV, why not sign up for a 30 day free trial where you can check out our platform for yourself. You can also learn more about our awesome resources and why we’re the number one digital signage platform made for education, by signing up for a demo today.