It was brilliant to catch up with Tom Sale, Whole School Education Technology Coach and Innovation Lead at Kent College Dubai, to hear all about their success with TrilbyTV. Kent College Dubai is a British curriculum independent school with approximately 1550 students from nursery up to Year 13, representing an incredible 92 nationalities. The school has been open for the past eight years and became part of Aldar Education in 2024.
Tom started by telling us that he was familiar with TrilbyTV before moving to the Emirates as he’d seen it used in a few primary schools in and around North West England. When he arrived at Kent College Dubai, the school was using a basic version of digital signage. In the main entrances, there was a single screen with a USB plugged into the back showing a collection of marketing slides for the school. Tom told us, “It did the job but it wasn’t fresh, it wasn’t updated, it didn’t stand out, you couldn’t put audio to it.” He went on to say “while it did showcase the school, it didn’t showcase everything that TrilbyTV does.”
At the end of 2023, Tom got in touch with TrilbyTV to find out about setting it up in the school. They started with a free trial which they ran on two screens – in a classroom and a spare room – to showcase the possibilities. After testing out TrilbyTV in the school, the Senior Leadership Team saw the potential of the platform and decided to go ahead with TrilbyTV as their signage provider.
The right content for the right audience
To start with, the school set up a screen in each of the four entrances in the nursery, the junior school and two in the senior school. Each entrance has different content relevant for the age group. TrilbyTV makes this easy with the Categories and Playlists features which allow you to curate your signage for particular areas or events. “You can really tailor the content.” Tom explained.
Following the success of these four screens, Tom decided to set up screens in other areas of the school which are also tailored to the audience. They now also have screens in the canteens which include material from the TrilbyTV Content Catalogue. In the lower canteen, Tom has included content such as times tables and geography interspersed with school updates. Meanwhile, in the upper canteen he has set up biology, chemistry and physics content suitable for older students so that the signage supports their learning outside lessons.
Tom also likes to use Smart Content to engage children throughout the school, telling us that the birthday slides in particular are very popular with the children. Tom had initially set up this content to display in the junior school but senior students had heard about the birthday celebrations and wanted them too! Not only is this use of signage very engaging, but it’s easy to manage – you just need to upload a list of birthday dates and names to TrilbyTV and they’ll automatically show on the right date. Tom told us, “Once you’ve uploaded that, you don’t have to touch it.”
Parents are also a big part of school life at Kent College Dubai. The school has an on-site coffee shop for parents to use, weekly parents meetings and an active Parent Teacher Friends Association. To keep them up to date, there are now screens in the coffee shop which parents enjoy watching. At pick up time, they’re also able to see what’s been going on in the school in real time on the entrance screens, before it comes out in the weekly newsletter. Tom believes that this is incredibly important for parental engagement and said, “It just adds that interactivity and connection to school in a way that you couldn’t really do in the past.”
Five considerations for digital signage
Download free PDFCelebrating the school community
As Kent College Dubai has expanded their digital signage, both teachers and students have been inspired to contribute to the content. Each department shares weekly updates to display on the signage to showcase what’s going on in class, or to celebrate student work. Tom told us that, “it’s given the teachers that extra bit of purpose to showcase classroom learning beyond the classroom.” It’s also motivating for the students who love seeing their work on the screens. Tom explained “It’s given children an audience they might never have had. It gives them that purpose to really try their best.”
Another inspiring way the school uses signage is to celebrate individuals who’ve done amazing things. For example, they showcase students who’ve done well on A Level and GCSE results day, as well as sharing stories from students who’ve attended top universities around the world. Tom shared that this helps “to inspire the children to be the best they can be.”
Staff are also an important part of the school community. Recently, a large cohort of new staff joined the school and a series of slides were created to introduce them. This meant that all of the students and parents could get to know them and would recognise them, even if they weren’t their class teacher. A simple but highly effective way to bring the community closer together.
Tom likes that TrilbyTV has become so popular with staff and students, because it has democratised signage content creation. He told us,
“The school community has started to take ownership of the content whereas in the past it would have been one or two people managing the content.”
Sharing messages quickly and easily
Kent College Dubai became an Apple school in September 2024, so the majority of their signage is run from 86” LG screens with Apple TV, alongside some Promethean boards and re-purposed iPads which have allowed them to expand signage across the school. All of the screens are centrally managed through the TrilbyTV dashboard, managed by Tom and Amaal, the Parent Representation Officer.
Tom enjoys managing the signage and feels that it’s easy and stress free: “For the wellbeing of someone who’s trying to manage it, it’s unmatched in any way,” he said. In particular, he likes that messages can be shared almost instantly without having to physically go to each screen or update individual USBs. He told us,
“TrilbyTV offers something that traditional signage didn’t offer – that you can update it immediately. It’s the closest thing I can get to a live feed.”
He went on to explain that on the morning we met, a teacher had asked him to display a poster and he was able to put it onto the screens immediately. He said,
“The advantage, I think, with TrilbyTV is the ability to have something in your feed in a matter of minutes. That, to me, is the game-changer. It’s where you can showcase what’s going on at a really rapid pace”
Another time-saving advantage is that Kent College Dubai is able to connect their social media feed to TrilbyTV. The content on the screens automatically updates as new content is added to Instagram, so there’s no need to upload it again.
Plans for digital signage growth
Although Kent College Dubai is already making fantastic use of digital signage across the school, they have plans to continue to grow their signage. A particularly exciting project is to experiment with outdoor signage. The school currently has a traditional banner outside which advertises the school. However, they’d like to install a large 100” external screen to make this display more dynamic. Tom shared that,
“We can change the feed and put a QR code on there. Those sorts of things that you can add to signage instantly, that you could never do on a static banner, just gives that extra element of giving people insight into what’s going on in the classroom and in the school.”
Guide to effective digital signage in education
Request free guideAs well as this, they’d like to experiment with showing content on different screens in different ways. For example, Tom told us that he’s considering how screens in classrooms could be used to share important information and motivational messages. He told us, “we have 123 screens on site that I could potentially push TrilbyTV to.”
They’d also like to create a parent playlist “celebrating all the best bits” that parents can view at home via a public sharing link in TrilbyTV. This is especially important for senior students whose parents may not have as much contact with the school as junior pupils’ parents.
Summing up his experience, Tom said “overall, working with TrilbyTV has been seamless” with a user-friendly platform and helpful support team. We’ve loved working with Kent College Dubai too and we can’t wait to see what they do with their signage in the future.
If you’d like to find out more about how TrilbyTV can help to support your school community, we’d love to hear from you. You can book a free demo with our team who can show you the platform and talk to you about your individual needs. Plus, if you’d like to try it for yourself, we offer a free 30 day trial with full functionality and support.