The big summer holiday screen install at Valley Park School

The summer holidays are typically a quieter time of the year for many schools, with only a fraction of staff on site. This can make it the perfect opportunity to take care of important building work and maintenance. Not just physically but digitally too, with many IT departments springing into action! This was exactly the case for Valley Park School who have been running TrilbyTV since March. They saw first-hand the benefits of running an easy to use digital signage system, so much so that they decided that the summer break was the perfect time to increase their signage portfolio, expanding from eight to fifteen screens. Senior IT Technician, Jon Pope told us why they initially installed TrilbyTV,

“Having had a clunky system that we paid for previously, we reverted to a “free” option, while running the screens on Android boxes. It was flaky, kept freezing, timing out and not updating. We also found it really time-consuming as even the simplest piece of content like a poster needed to be uploaded by the IT department. This was when I realised that we needed an actual solution that was user friendly. Our IT reseller Insight kindly pointed out TrilbyTV as it was so easy to use and straight away, I knew it was going to create one less job for us and save a load of time!”

A low cost solution

Another factor that helped in the school’s decision to buy, was that Valley Park already had most of the equipment in place to run TrilbyTV,

“Because TrilbyTV works with most common hardware devices, we already had the Android boxes and screens in place, which meant that there wasn’t any large initial hardware outlay. TrilbyTV’s unlimited screen licence meant we could start with a few screens and grow with no need to spend more.”

Instant impact & expansion

TrilbyTV had created such an impact that Jon felt that they needed to expand on the signage,

“There were screens in some places and not in others and we felt that we needed them everywhere in the school. Not only would this help us relay general school announcements across the site but also would allow departments to share individual messaging like room changes and homework information. Our new headteacher was more than on board and having seen the positive impact that the screens had made so far, even suggested putting more budget towards this to make sure every corridor now has a screen.”

Headteacher Margaret Hutchinson remarked on how positively the screens had been received with staff, students and visitors,

“We have been able to introduce a fresh, new, appealing look to all our signage, and can share new notices at the click of a button, meaning that our displays are now much more reactive to our busy school life. We arrange which notices need to be displayed on which screens, and have insightful displays that share key information with our visitors, too. We have noticed that our students engage more frequently with our new displays, and this was exactly the impact we were hoping for when we adopted Trilby. We are now excited to explore the potential further!”

Leadership taking control

Growing the number of digital screens around your school doesn’t have to add to any administrative tasks or workload to the IT department. As Jon continued,

“We are planning to give all our senior leaders admin rights to approve content and then we’re going to give all the heads of departments accounts to log on to upload the content. This will then take the day-to-day management away from the IT department, which is perfect! We’ve also just had 40 interactive screens installed into classrooms for learning, so I’ve added TrilbyTV to them so that when there’s an open evening we can have screens showing information in every classroom.”

It’s great to know that the TrilbyTV unlimited licence is being used in this way. The unlimited screen licence means that every classroom display can become a digital signage screen for key events. Jon summed up by saying,

“The nice thing about TrilbyTV is that it’s so easy it isn’t complicated to add additional screens. With our last system we wouldn’t be able to do this so smoothly, it would have been a real headache.”

It’s really brilliant to hear how Valley Park’s IT department has used the summer holidays to expand their digital signage portfolio with the help of TrilbyTV. We can’t wait to see some great content on those screens soon!