At TrilbyTV, we’re proud to have a wealth of educational experience across our team. Many of us have worked directly with schools as trainers, technology advisors, teachers and more. In this edition of our Expert Blog, we caught up with former teachers Amie, Graeme and Suzanna to learn more about showcasing student content.
When schools talk to us about digital signage, one of the key things they ask about is the ability to share a range of student work, quickly and easily. Traditionally, it would often be pinned to notice boards or stuck up around the school. While students love to see their work celebrated, showcasing it in this way can often be time-consuming for teaching staff and challenging to update regularly.
So what’s the solution? We asked our team about their teaching experience, the importance of displaying student work, and how to use digital tools to make it quicker and easier.
Q1: What do you do day-to-day at TrilbyTV?
Amie Liversidge: I am part of the growth team at TrilbyTV, ultimately helping to grow the number of schools using digital signage to enhance their whole school communication. This involves understanding the current challenges schools and Multi Academy Trusts face around communication and identifying how the platform can support these challenges, from promoting pupils’ voice to gaining greater uptake to staff and student events.
Graeme Kerr: I head up the sales team at TrilbyTV. I support the team with developing their sales pipeline, coaching and training as well as inputting into the strategic direction of the wider business to ensure maximum revenue growth.
Suzanna Taylor: I’m Head of Marketing, so I’m responsible for spreading the word about TrilbyTV. My team works on projects such as the website, events, webinars and email campaigns.
Q2: Tell us about your role in education. What kind of settings did you work in?
Amie: I previously taught in primary schools, mostly small village settings of mixed year group classes.I also have experience of working in a residential school for young people with complex autism and it was here that I really saw the challenges of communication. Set within a 50 acre site with over 500 staff, many of whom were working one to one and doing shift work, it was particularly difficult to ensure all staff received the same messaging as many weren’t sitting behind a desk or accessing emails regularly.
There were screens around the site in most of the homes and reception but either turned off or simply not sharing the up-to-date key messages that would be helpful to see. It was hugely frustrating organising events for staff around wellbeing, only to find many didn’t know they were taking place as they’d miss the posters and emails.
Graeme: I was fortunate enough to have worked with a wide variety of age groups across a number of different settings. I started in a state primary school in a deprived area where I specialised in the arts and technology. This was particularly important to the pupils at this school as they found academic endeavours challenging and needed an outlet to express themselves, especially as they often lacked the opportunities in their home lives.
I moved on to set up a junior school within an existing senior school. Again, my focus was on developing technology both from a hardware/network perspective and from a curriculum perspective. From there, I moved back to state education as a senior leader helping to develop the school’s strategic direction.
Suzanna: I was a Modern Foreign Languages teacher in secondary schools. I taught at schools in Merton, Croydon and Richmond in a mix of academies, local authority maintained schools and free schools which gave me a real insight into the different ways schools operate.
I specialised in Spanish and a lot of my teaching was through visual resources. I found that it helped students to engage with the language if they could see the places where it was spoken along with their culture, traditions, foods and festivals.
Q3: Why do you think it’s important to showcase student work?
Amie: I think it’s hugely important to share and showcase student’s work to help build a sense of pride and accomplishment. Everyone has different strengths and the power of digital signage means that the likes of sporting achievements, digital creations and performing arts that can’t easily be displayed on a traditional display can come to life and involve the school community in celebrating their success.
Graeme: For me, being able to share and showcase pupils’ work helps to give purpose to that work and promotes a sense of value, belonging and pride in what they’ve achieved. This is particularly important as some of the pupils I worked with, it would be their only opportunity to experience their efforts being valued.
Suzanna: I think it’s important to showcase student work because it shows young people that their efforts are recognised and that their work has an impact beyond their exercise book. It also helps inspire other students – they can learn from one another and feel motivated to do their best work.
Q4: How did you display student work? What were the pros and cons of doing it in that way?
Amie: When I first qualified as a teacher I loved doing classroom displays and making the learning space vibrant and engaging, a huge part of this was displaying children’s work. I quickly found limitations on classroom wall space though, working in an older building with set display boards meant I couldn’t always display everyone’s work at once.
It always felt that as soon as the display was up, we were quickly on to the next topic. It would be up for a matter of weeks and then changed, or left for far too long as it was time-consuming to keep it up-to-date. Another issue was that there wasn’t an endless supply of backing paper so I’d have to hunt this down.
Graeme: With my focus having been to develop the use of technology in school, I would integrate the use of digital media in almost every aspect of the curriculum, I would then face the challenge of how to display pupils’ work. Often, this would just be their digital work printed onto paper to make a display, using QR codes or digital portfolios.
The problem with this was that neither senior management nor Estyn would have the time to view or evaluate their work in those formats. Having digital signage in place would be the ideal way to display and share pupils’ work with the wider school community.
Suzanna: Like Amie, I loved doing classroom displays at first. I collected lots of linguistic and cultural resources that I put onto boards in my classroom and I added student work too. We often did things like making film posters or menus in the target language that make great additions to the displays.
However, as time went on, I felt frustrated managing these displays. They took a long time to create and update, and things often went tatty after a couple of weeks. That meant that it didn’t look great and it can’t have felt great for the students whose work was on display.
Q5: What are some ways that schools can use TrilbyTV to showcase student work?
Amie: Learning goes beyond the classroom and schools are fantastic at capturing these opportunities on camera, particularly in the early years. They provide a snapshot of hands-on experiences that can’t always be recorded on paper and in books, yet often these are simply printed and stuck in books to evidence learning. Instead, they can be shared digitally using TrilbyTV for the whole school community of staff, pupils and parents to enjoy and celebrate.
Whilst teaching Year 1, children created Andy Goldsworthy inspired art using natural resources such as leaves, twigs, pine cones and acorns. We were able to ensure the whole school could see and enjoy these creations by sharing them on our digital signage before the elements naturally cleared them away.
Graeme: There are lots of ways that TrilbyTV can be used to showcase pupils’ work. From displaying their creativity through digital work to sharing photos and videos of projects and events. You can use the ready-to-go content already available within TrilbyTV to celebrate success, display house points or even create polls to peer evaluate work.
I spoke to a school at Bett that had set up a digital display club that gave students ownership of the content that is shared throughout the school community. It really is a brilliant way of getting everyone involved in sharing high quality, vibrant, engaging and dynamic content throughout the school or college.
Suzanna: As Graeme and Amie have said, digital signage is a really versatile way to showcase student work. Teachers can take photos of work and upload it to TrilbyTV, or add digital work directly. There’s also an opportunity to share videos featuring students, or that they’ve made themselves.
You can also use Smart Content to easily celebrate academic or sporting achievements, which is lovely for students to see on the screen. We often hear that children are made up to see their names around the school!
It was great to hear more about the team’s backgrounds and discover some of their advice for sharing student work and achievements. If you’re a TrilbyTV customer and you’d like to share your top tips for celebrating your school community, we’d love to hear from you! Why not share some photos of your signage with us on LinkedIn, X or Instagram?
Not a TrilbyTV user yet? Our education-focused digital signage platform is a simple and effective way to share content across your school. To find out more, you can book a free demo with our friendly team who’ll talk you through the best options for your school. If you’d prefer to try it out, you can sign up for a 30 day free trial.