EPISODE 152 | Guest: Ellyce Kelly, professional services consultant for Visix
Optimizing the student experience is a core goal of every educational institution, whether it’s a college campus, a community college, a high school or an entire K-12 district. Digital signage can improve your student communications for higher engagement with them – as well as faculty, staff and visitors – but only if you have good content.
In this episode, we’ll give you an overview of the benefits of digital signage and how it works, and walk you through lots and lots of ideas for what to show on screens for both K-12 schools and higher education.
- Get dozens of content examples and ideas for what to put on screens
- Discover how screens drive immediate action and ROI
- Save time with ready-made content and centralized scheduling
- Hear how to target messaging to specific audiences for more impact
- Understand how digital signage ties into CAP emergency alerts
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Get more content ideas in our free Digital Signage Content Guide
Transcript
Derek DeWitt: Schools today are competing with each other for students, for faculty and staff. And a lot of high-performing schools, or districts really, they need great comms in some way. Digital signage helps create an atmosphere that is kind of always communicating, and it’s very flexible ’cause it can change very quickly. It has a wide scope, which means many different groups can get involved and lots of different kinds of messages can go out there. And in the long run, it’s pretty affordable.
So, we’re gonna talk today about how to improve student communications with digital signs. My guest today is Ellyce Kelly, professional services consultant for Visix. Hi, Ellyce.
Ellyce Kelly: Hi, Derek.
Derek DeWitt: How are you?
Ellyce Kelly: I’m doing great. How are you doing today?
Derek DeWitt: Excellent. Excellent. I’d like to thank Ellyce for talking to me today. And of course, everybody out there for listening. Don’t forget you can subscribe, and you can follow along with a transcript on the Visix website.
So, Ellyce a lot of schools are starting to adopt digital signage. Not all of them, though. Some of them are still, honestly, it’s hard to believe in 2024, but they’re still sticking up, you know, paper posters and things. And when we’re talking about schools, we’re talking about both universities and colleges, and K-12 schools, all kinds of educational institutions.
So, maybe just gimme a quick sort of pitch for those people who haven’t adopted it yet. Why should educational institutions use digital signage?
Ellyce Kelly: Sure. So, people don’t just read paper anymore. When’s the last time you picked up a piece of paper and read it?
Derek DeWitt: Well, I’m weird; like yesterday. But that’s me.
Ellyce Kelly: Digital signage grabs attention and much more so than a piece of paper. People are drawn to screens. They’re drawn to color, images, and especially movement. And here’s an interesting little stat. I know you like stats. 63% of people see at least one digital sign every day. And frankly, I’m a little surprised that number’s not even higher.
You know, if you think about it, static images and messages just become wallpaper. So, a piece of paper stuck to outside of a conference room or in a hallway on an old corkboard – who’s going to look at that? It just becomes part of the background. And it, honestly, it just gets ignored.
Derek DeWitt: This is true. Yeah. It’s, it’s a little bit like TV, but not quite like TV. ‘Cause TV, when you’re watching that, you’re settled in, you’re in one place and you’re focused, that’s your main purpose. Whereas this, even though it has color and movement, and maybe even sound if the environment permits it, the audience is on the move. They’re actually on their way from point A to point B, doing something else, they’ve got something else going on. And so, it’s a different medium in that regard.
Ellyce Kelly: Absolutely. And, you know, you have to think about this, too. You are competing with that little magic rectangle that’s in everyone’s hands, the mobile phone. And so, that’s something else you have to think about.
One thing that’s great about digital signage that you really don’t see on your phone is it gets people to take action if your message content is engaging and interesting, and you’re putting in things like call to action, with QR codes, you know, scan this QR code and it takes them to a website and gives them more information. So, you know, you’re going to find out, are folks looking at this? You want people to engage in that content that they’re seeing on your displays. And it not just be wall art.
Although I will say this, we do have some clients that use digital signage as art, but it’s moving, it’s dynamic, it’s interesting. It’s something that really engages the audience, and it’s kind of a really interesting use case scenario. So, you can use digital signage as art, if you will, but really the majority of our clients, and what you’re trying to do is to get people engaged and get them to do something, to take some kind of action.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. I know Sean Matthews, the president and CEO of Visix, has said a couple of times in the past that in his opinion, the main point of digital signage is to alter or change human behavior. Which I thought was very interesting because I think most people think of it as just sending out information. It’s a new way to send out information in this push sort of system, but it really isn’t, especially because it’s become so ubiquitous. It is, in many ways, this kind of two-way conversation.
Ellyce Kelly: Yep, absolutely. And digital signage gives you more options, but it gives you more control over that messaging and who you’re trying to reach. You know, different content on different screens for different audiences. A college student and a third grader, not the same audience, right? They’re not going to want to see the same things.
And in addition, you’ve got content that could be specific to a geographical area or a time zone. So, you know, your date, time, weather, things like that are gonna be to that localized area where you have your displays. But even also the text that’s written on your messages. Is it in English? It is in Spanish? French? I mean, it depends on where your audience is, who the majority of your audience is. I think it’s important that if you do have audiences that speak different languages, you need to be showing messages in those languages so that they can understand it.
Derek DeWitt: Right. That’s true. But make sure that it’s, you know, languages that those people speak. I mean, if you don’t have any Filipinos walking by no sense putting up Tagalog messages.
Ellyce Kelly: Exactly. And then things like traffic, local health stats, things like that, that also needs to be localized, right? I don’t really care so much about the traffic in, you know, Prague.
Derek DeWitt: Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You don’t care that we’re under flood warnings right now because that doesn’t affect you in Atlanta.
Ellyce Kelly: Well, we would want you to be safe though.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And a lot of that I think comes from feeds, right? You get these live updating feeds, and it’s kind of a no-brainer. You set it up and it just automatically pulls from outside sources. So, the information’s always really up to the moment, in many cases.
Ellyce Kelly: So, you have centralized control. Messages can be designed in advance and scheduled. You also have that auto-updating content. I’m a big fan of that. And you can even decide on the schedule.
So, do I want to see traffic when it’s, you know, 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning? Not necessarily. But I wouldn’t mind seeing it, maybe really early morning, maybe midday, late afternoon, when I know traffic is heating up. You can schedule all of that in advance, to play in rotation with your other content. And that’s a lot of control. And that’s something that you get with digital signage.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. And I think that kind of ability allows you to, if you want, you could have a very small team. Even just one person can be the person who manages the whole system, you know? It’s actually, once it’s all set up, it doesn’t take that much hands-on, on a daily basis.
Ellyce Kelly: It really doesn’t. And you know, most school districts, they say that marketing is super important, but they have a very small number of people and resources, but also money, to run their digital signage. In all their marketing. This is something that can help get the message out, but with fewer resources, including those human resources.
Derek DeWitt: Right, exactly. And of course, you know, talking about using the resources that you have, you do have students. I mean, students can get involved. They can, they can create messages. They’re creating, you know, clubs and doing theater and sports and stuff. And some of them might be into it. Sort of a, you know, post-postmodern AV club.
Ellyce Kelly: Absolutely. And getting students involved, it’s a great way to teach them how to use a new tool, a new software. And I’ve had clients at K-12 and also on college campuses where they do get students involved. And it’s super fun to train a group of seventh graders, you know, on how to schedule messages. But they were, you know, really interested. They’re excited about it. It’s something that they get to learn that’s kind of outside the scope of their daily, you know, math and science and all that kind of stuff. So, they enjoy it.
And, you know, we can also make the process very easy too with templated libraries of content. So branded, themed, matching, you know, all of your corporate identity or your organization identity. And that makes the content with that ensures that it looks good, whether you have a seventh grader doing it or a college-age student doing it, or just a marketing person doing it, whoever’s in charge of it. And sometimes it’s an IT person in charge of it. So, if you get that templated library, it’s going to look good no matter what.
Derek DeWitt: Right. And it creates a standardized look, too, which is nice. You’re not going, hey, I think Bob did this one. It doesn’t matter, ’cause it all looks the same, which is kind of nice.
I want to go back to something you said a moment ago, which is that a lot of school districts say marketing is really, really important for them, and yet they just don’t have the budget or the people or the resources to do it. Some don’t even have a communications plan at all. I read recently that most, more than half, of school communications budgets in the United States are less than 25% of the total annual expenditure and sometimes much lower than that. So, obviously each dollar’s got to do a lot of work.
Ellyce Kelly: It does! The good news is at Visix we have licensing options, we have cloud-hosted services. We even have hardware as a service. So, hardware can be leased. That really helps with the upfront expenditure. You’re not having to make, you know, a huge payment up front. And I think that has really helped a lot of schools, and other organizations as well.
You know, and you also have an option, too, for advertising. I work with a lot of really mostly college campuses that will charge to display content on their digital signs. I think that’s a great idea. I’ve seen around $25, you know, for your message to run, not all the time, thankfully, but on a recurring schedule for a couple of weeks. But I’ve also heard that you can pay 150 bucks to have your name on a birthday message in Times Square. So I don’t know, maybe, maybe folks will pay more.
Derek DeWitt: That’s right. Yeah. Right. So, now what are we talking about with that? We’re talking about student groups? We’re talking about outside vendors, like cafes and things around the college campus? Both?
Ellyce Kelly: Yep. So, both. If you want to promote an event, for example, then you could pay that 25 bucks or whatever the charge, that’s the most I’ve seen on a college campus. But hey, I mean, inflation. Charge more!
Derek DeWitt: That’s right. Charge them more money. So yeah, it’ll actually end up paying for yourself much faster.
And of course, like you said, a lot of the purpose of digital signage messaging is to get people to do something. And especially if you’re using something that’s easy to track, like a QR code, you already have your ROI kind of built right in. If someone went to that website, and especially if you make a dedicated webpage just attached to that particular QR code, you’re not sending them to your normal homepage or something, but something that’s created just for this campaign or this particular push, you know how effective it is because, how many people visited? Well, the only way that they could get there is by scanning that specific QR code. So I already know how effective it is or isn’t.
Ellyce Kelly: Exactly. And you, you nailed it with, you’ve got to have a dedicated webpage. So, when that QR code is scanned, you know that you’re getting return on engagement on those digital displays. That’s critical.
Derek DeWitt: And also, like you said, you can localize and things like this, and different audiences have different needs. Obviously third graders don’t need the same thing that, you know, college sophomores need. We know this. But the audience could be anything – we’re talking about students, but it could be students, it could be parents, it could be, I don’t know, guest lecturers, donors, staff, faculty, the rival football team coming to the college to, or high school, to play in a game; them and all of their fans and family, they’re gonna see the digital signage as well. And those are all very different audiences.
Ellyce Kelly: Absolutely. And you know, think about too, not just visiting teams for, you know, for sports teams, but maybe recruits. Hey, you gotta come play at this school; this is where you need to be. Obviously, you want to get them engaged and them to think, wow, this is some pretty awesome technology in addition to this gorgeous campus and this great facility where I’m gonna be working out and, you know, throwing a football. You do, you have a very wide audience of different people that you need to target your messaging to.
Derek DeWitt: So like what? I know events are very common. I think many people have said before, events are the most common thing that people like to show on digital signs. Obviously, it’s promoting them, it’s giving the schedules, where things are, maybe tied into wayfinding. What are some other things that an educational facility might throw up there?
Ellyce Kelly: Sure. So, enrollment dates, countdowns. So, like a countdown to kickoff, right? Or countdown to first day of school or to a holiday. Holiday closings. And then you might have, you know, things that are recreational. So, theater, drama club performances. Of course we talked about sports events, you know, dances. Think about, you know, when you were in elementary school, how many dances did you have? We had a dance pretty often.
Derek DeWitt: Oh boy. I can’t remember. I mean, there may have been many; I went to one.
Ellyce Kelly: You went to, just went to one. Not into dancing?
Derek DeWitt: Nah. You know, and like icky girls, they got cooties. You know, you don’t wanna get cooties.
Ellyce Kelly: Boys had cooties, too, so….
Derek DeWitt: Yes. But they were boy cooties, so it was all right.
And you know, like we said, we talked about sports because, it popped to mind because honestly, athletics is almost like its own subset of digital signage. I know some university campuses, I mean, it’s a big deal. This stuff’s televised, they have these big modern sports stadiums, students and players are being recruited for pro ball, in whatever particular game it is that they’re playing.
Ellyce Kelly: It’s a money maker.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. It’s a big money maker. And a lot of that helps fuel, not just the athletics program, but other parts of the school as well. So, you know, there’s a lot of stuff out there, just for high school and college sports.
Ellyce Kelly: Absolutely. And if you’re making all that money, why are you not showing digital signage? You can afford it!
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, really. You can afford it. Right! Now, obviously they’re going to be academic things, right? Test dates, I don’t know what else? Counselor hours, professor hours, I don’t know, state and county requirements, things like this.
Ellyce Kelly: Absolutely. And then you also can, you could show motivational content. Recognizing achievements, awards. I’m working with a university right now, and they’re getting one of our new custom display designs kit, and it’s going to have basically pick and fill messages where they can just pick and then fill in the content.
But they already know what they want that for. They want some that have images, so they can put a headshot in for somebody that maybe received an award, maybe a speaker that’s going to be, you know, coming in as well, but you know, someone that got a grant, or a team of students that received a grant. Those are motivational. Those can get other folks saying, Wow, why didn’t we get a grant? We need to do better! So, it’s motivational; it’s a little bit of gamification at the same time.
Derek DeWitt: Sure, sure. And I think, I mean, you know, even though some people may go, meh, I didn’t need that, the fact is we like to see it. Hey, I did achieve something and hey, my school knows that I did it and kind of told everybody about it. So, that’s kind of cool.
Ellyce Kelly: Absolutely. And then you’ve got your supplementary content. So, training, extra help, tutors, study groups, you know, where those are being held, who you can contact, scan that QR code to learn more, join the group.
And then you might have things that are campus culture. So respecting one another, health and wellness, procedures if you have a problem, like anti-bullying, social media guidelines, tips, DEI messages.
Derek DeWitt: I also think that kind of thing is good for the parents as well. Like, parents come by or they’re looking to, oh, maybe I’ll send my kid here instead of this other place, and they see that there’s this culture that’s being, you know, promoted on the digital signs. Hey, we care about this stuff. Hey, this is, you know, we take this stuff seriously. And I think it would make parents feel like, oh, this is a good, safe environment for my kid.
Ellyce Kelly: Yep. And I’ll tell you, another big thing that you’re gonna see is sustainability. This is a huge topic for today’s schools, especially universities and colleges. You know, you might want to focus on things like, we recycle, we’re environmentally friendly, you know. And you can put up things like mission statement, school philosophy and all that.
But I will say with sustainability and maybe the, you know, recycling and environmentally-friendly things, make sure that you’re showing stats and charts and graphs and really pretty visuals to go along with that information. Because otherwise, again, it just becomes part of the background, right? It becomes boring. People don’t want to read a lot of text.
We’ve got a few clients I can think of just right off the top of my head that have really gorgeous interactive artwork or data mapped artwork, I should say, that, you know, pulls from their data sources, that talks about their sustainability, how much water they’ve saved, things like that. And they’re using data-mapped artwork to show and hide different pieces of art to let you know, kinda, where they are on the map of sustainability. And it’s really neat.
There’s some great examples on our website, in our online gallery, under AxisTV Signage Suite. And I know Derek will put the link in there for you where you can go and scroll through and look at all those pretty pictures. But there’s some really good ideas in there, how you can promote that, and folks will look at it and say, wow, that’s awesome! And then maybe that, you know, bottle that’s in their hand, that little water bottle, gets tossed in the recycling bin, you know, when they’re done.
Derek DeWitt: And, you know, some of the stuff can actually be, not just the school itself, but sort of the larger community. And just, especially when it comes to university, like, hey, you’re entering the adult world. Like, you know, most college students can vote, you know? Unless they’re particularly precocious and they’re 16 years old, getting their BA. So, you know, things like that. Even like, hey, here’s how you register to vote. Hey, you know, here’s where this event is happening. Here’s where this local politician is having a fundraiser.
Ellyce Kelly: Absolutely. And then of course, you’ve got just your entertaining content. You know, funny student-made videos, images, you’ve got entertainment news. Again, those can come from feeds, auto-updating feeds. Do you get tired of me talking about those, Derek?
Derek DeWitt: No, no, no, no. I love it. I think they’re great.
Ellyce Kelly: I just feel like for the cost, it’s so little and saves so much time. But we’ve got some great feeds that are interesting. You can do local trivia, you know, things like that. And, again, gotta get some call to action in there. Obviously, you want to mix that in with your entertainment content.
But you can even do that with your entertainment content. Did you think this video was funny? Yeah, I mean, just to see what, what folks like. I mean, I’ll tell you, too, the age difference, right? Just from a college-age student to, say, someone of my age, we won’t have to say how old I am, but what they think is funny, I might not think is funny. I saw a TikTok the other day. Someone, a 21-year-old, showed me a TikTok and they were laughing hysterically. And I was like, that’s kind of funny.
Derek DeWitt: It’s amusing. It’s droll.
Ellyce Kelly: Right, right. But it’s, it’s not as funny to me as it is to them. So, you’re not gonna, you know, you’re not gonna hit everybody with the…just, this is true of any content. That’s why you have to make sure that you’re hitting all audiences.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, for sure. Now, of course, I also think about wayfinding. We’ve been talking a lot recently here on the podcast about how wayfinding in the workplace is kind of changing. And it’s not now so much a tool for visitors to orient themselves, though that’s still something that’s important. And again, I think especially about a school often quite large campus or space, lots of different buildings to get to. Obviously useful for students in their first couple of weeks, or if they get, you know, they get a different class, Hey, you’re going to AP classes, now they’re in a totally different area. But I think people who’ve been there longer can also benefit from campus wayfinding.
Ellyce Kelly: I recently visited a very large college campus with the regional sales manager for that, that region, and gorgeous school. But where’s the parking lot, right?
Derek DeWitt: Right!
Ellyce Kelly: Where did we park? And this school does a great job. This university does a phenomenal job with their digital signage. It is literally everywhere. I did not walk in one building that did not have our digital signage, from room signs to large displays to video walls. I mean, they’ve got it all.
Think about this, too. You might have a science professor, you know, that, how often does he go to the school of business? He might not know how to get there. Or maybe not to the floor he needs to go to. So, it helps not just guests, but it does help new students, visiting students, parents, but vendors can also benefit from wayfinding to find where did I park my car?
Derek DeWitt: And, you know, speaking about parking the car, obviously some people are not gonna have cars and, you know, maybe you’re lucky enough to have some kind of public transportation either in the city or town or, I mean, there are some universities that are so large that they actually have like a shuttle service and things like this. So, you can put up those schedules and maps and timetables and things like that as well. As well as, you know, if people are driving, as you said, traffic updates, but even how many parking spaces are currently available.
Ellyce Kelly: Yeah, there’s sensors in parking spaces now, so you can see where can I park? We even have a client that had a heat map, so you could see how many people were in a certain area. This is a retail client, but most universities do have shuttles or have buses. And that’s as simple as just adding a web URL to your playlist rotation. Very simple to schedule that.
And again, scheduling it, obviously for shuttles on campuses, that needs to be playing pretty frequently in the rotation, ’cause those shuttles are going pretty much from 5:00 AM until, you know, 11:00 PM in some cases; some of them don’t run as long as that. That’s of interest to anyone that is going to be riding on those buses. So, having that mixed in with your content or having its own little dedicated area, I think, is a good idea. And we have a lot of clients that are doing large universities that are using those shuttle schedules.
Derek DeWitt: Also, I know that the University of Kansas, for example, uses the Visix digital signage software to talk about the housing that’s on campus.
Ellyce Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. Housing descriptions, like, what is this, like this condo or apartments, what are they like, or even dorms? What’s the availability? What sort of, you know, selection do I have? What, you know, you can even get your application going, right? Again, scanning a QR code to get it started. Say, oh, I flipped through here, you know, I’m touching the screen, I’m looking at this, oh, I like this one, these people look really happy at this, at this apartment, I want to live there, or this dorm.
Derek DeWitt: And that call to action really makes sense in that kind of a situation because, hey, there’s an apartment in this block that looks good; I want it, and I want to get it before anybody else. I’m standing right here at the sign, I’m gonna go ahead and scan the QR code and go right to the online application and fill it out.
Ellyce Kelly: And get it done before someone else does.
Derek DeWitt: Exactly. You don’t wanna miss out.
Ellyce Kelly: And then we have interactive Hall of Fame, alumni, athletic boards, donor boards. I’m going to even throw fundraising into this, especially if you’re using art that says we are $1,000 away from our goal. I mean, Derek, I know you, you know me; we’re probably going to contribute to that. If we’ve got a thousand bucks left, well think about how many other people might say, okay, I mean, I’m not gonna throw a thousand maybe, but I might throw 25 bucks. But then think about everybody else that’s saying, Wow, they’re so close, I wanna help get them there. That’s how you’re getting your return on engagement. You are getting someone to take action and give money, so that you can reach a goal. That’s a big thing that I see a lot.
And definitely, like I was saying about the Hall of Fame, the alumni, I’m seeing a lot of that, too. Donor boards, you know, recognizing people that donate to the school, whether it is K-12 or university. You want those people to stand out and folks like seeing their picture saying thanks, thank you for your donation. You’ve given us all this money, so that we can build all these great things and get this awesome digital signage, you know, in addition to all this other technology that we want, which is better for our students and our staff and our visitors and everything else. So, I’m seeing a lot more of that. It’s been on the rise for many years, but I’m seeing a lot more of it now, which I think is great.
Derek DeWitt: That’s cool. I think that’s awesome. And I also think alumni and Hall of Fame boards and things like that are also cool because they… I know for a lot of these institutions, they’ve been around for a while, and they’re proud of their history and their legacy. And these interactive boards really allow you to put an amazing amount of information just kind of nested inside, you know, submenus and different screens and things like this.
So, you can really get an astonishing amount of information in there that people can then access. They see whatever they want. Oh, I want to learn more about, you know, what scientists have come from here, what athletics people have come from here, what other famous people have come from here? That’s interesting. Or, oh, I didn’t know that this school has turned out, you know, X number of you know, PhDs in the last 10 years. That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.
Ellyce Kelly: Yeah, absolutely. And then when you’re not, when someone’s not, interacting with the screen, you can promote your normal digital signage content, have that button that says, touch here to see this, that, or the other. You basically are getting two uses out of one, right, with an interactive display. So, I think that’s great.
I’ll tell you something else I see a lot of is menu boards. Menu boards can be as simple as, you know, the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday lunch schedule at a K-12, or it can be on really large screens on a university campus, at different stations for different types of meals, whether you’ve got coffee or you have, you know, pizza or whatever the food is that you have.
And those are great because in most cases, clients are using something like Google Sheets where someone’s updating a spreadsheet. And it can also be Excel. We have a CBOARD widget. There’s a lot of different ways that you can get menu content to pull from a data source where someone is just updating the pricing. Or if a menu item has to go away because you sold out of that, you know, frappuccino, then you can update that. And then your signs are updated within, you know, seconds really. I mean, you know, less than five minutes, you’ll have an update on those displays. So, I think that that saves folks a lot of time. And it looks absolutely stunning. It looks great.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. And I think that time saving aspect of it is something very, very useful. You know, when I think about locations where, hey, look, I need to be at a particular place at a particular time, I think of train stations, at airports. And I also think of, you know, a school, especially something like a university. You know, two o’clock, I gotta be in this hall at this lecture sitting down, or, you know, I had a professor once, many years ago that she would wait one minute and then she would lock the door. So, if you weren’t in there, you didn’t get to have that day’s lesson and you’re just kinda wandering around going, oh, well now what do I do?
So, you know, I think saving people that time, hey, we’re sold out of that particular menu item, I can see that before I go stand in line, and so I don’t waste my time with that. I choose something else. I think that’s something awesome.
Ellyce Kelly: I mean, it just makes it so much easier and quicker to get that really good looking, really beneficial and helpful content on your displays.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, and again, there’s a lot of stuff, and it sounds really, wow, it’d be so complicated to even set all that up. But like you said, templates, we have these content kits and subscription feeds. It’s actually not that hard to set everything up as a matter of fact. And once you get it all set up, bam, you’re done, you’re ready to go. You have a really comprehensive kind of an offering.
Which I think is key because, you know, like you said, we’re all sort of enmeshed in this information-rich environment all the time via our phones and our smart TVs and our computers and all the rest. And I think the digital signage has to at least compete with it, if not best it. Because if I’m using my phone to try and find all this stuff, I wanna know about parking, I wanna know about shuttle times, I wanna know about what’s on at the cafeteria, I want to know where this is that is, I’ve gotta go to multiple webpages to find that information. But the digital signage becomes this kinda one-stop shop where everything relevant to this particular physical location is here. And I think that’s incredibly useful. Not just because we’re accustomed to doing things in a digital way, but because it’s all about here. It kind of helps focus you.
Ellyce Kelly: Yeah, absolutely.
Derek DeWitt: And what do you think about integrating digital signage with social media feeds? Is this something people are doing? I know we suggest it, but I don’t know if people are actually doing it.
Ellyce Kelly: They are. And someone is already posting all of that content to social media. So, why are we not integrating that with your digital signage content? First of all, if somebody’s already doing it, we have feeds that will pull from social media. And you can pick the social media outlet or outlets that you want to show. You know, not all social media is gonna fit on your digital signage. If you don’t have, you know, audio and you’re showing a bunch of YouTube videos and they don’t have any captioning, or they’re not made for, not made really for digital signage, where you’ve got that moving transient audience, then you don’t need to show YouTube, for example.
But you’ve got other social media that’s interesting and fun and we have, you know, a couple of great feeds that you can change and customize the way that you show that content that makes it more dynamic and interesting for folks to look up. So, I would highly recommend that because there’s no point in you retyping what you’re already typing on your social media. So…
Derek DeWitt: Right. And you know, the thing is, everybody’s using social media, whether it’s the, especially the students, but you know, staff and everybody else are also using it. So, you know, things kind of come and go in waves in the digisphere. Things become topical for a week or two weeks. It could be something as simple as a particular meme that everybody’s talking about. Oh, it’s that, I know I keep mentioning Double Rainbow ’cause that’s the last time I really checked into this….
Ellyce Kelly: That’s been a while, Derek.
Derek DeWitt: That was years ago, I know.
Ellyce Kelly: But it’s a good one. It’s a good one.
Derek DeWitt: But you know, when Double Rainbow started getting a lot of press, that video showed that you’re kinda with it, and that you’re paying attention and current as well by, I don’t know, sticking it up there or making a reference to it. Or, hey, you know what, our two for one muffins can be your own personal double rainbow, you know?
Ellyce Kelly: Better than a double rainbow.
Derek DeWitt: Right. People are like, what the hell is Double Rainbow?
Ellyce Kelly: Now everyone’s gonna get on the Double Rainbow thing again. I bet that guy starts getting a ton of hits again.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, google it, google it.
And, you know, again, important for students, also important for parents, safety. I hate to say it, but it’s just a fact. And it’s not just, you know, human-created danger, but, you know, weather gets weird. As I said, we’re under warnings where I live for flooding. Stuff happens, you know? Fires break out, and the last thing we want is for anybody to get injured in any way. So, integrating with alert notifications in some way just makes a lot of sense. And I know a lot of schools, both K-12 and universities, this is the primary reason that they start looking for digital signages. They want some kind of comprehensive alert notification system.
Ellyce Kelly: It is, you’re correct on that. It’s, you know, vendors that specialize in those alerts, and you can integrate that with your digital signage along with your many other mediums that you’re using to reach the audience in the event of, like you said, some sort of an alert where folks need to be notified. And, you know, again, that can be tailored. You have certain types of alerts for students or, you know, others for faculty, but you’ve got clear, concise instructions, and there’s certain areas of the school that you might need to show that information, that alert information, and not other areas.
Derek DeWitt: Right. If the science building is on fire, and all the way across campus, you know, the design school, do they need to know? Maybe they do need to know, but they don’t need to have suddenly, you know, the alarms going off and everything turns red and flood the entire, you know, quad area and common areas with everybody, because then that’s just chaos, you know?
Ellyce Kelly: And, you know, another type of security that you need to think about is cybersecurity issues. And, you know, and that’s something that, what’s great about cloud hosting is, you know, you don’t have to worry about these types of things. You know, we worry about these types of things and take care of that for you. So, that’s another piece. It’s, obviously, that’s a different type of alert, but something that I know a lot of IT folks are thinking about.
Derek DeWitt: Sure, sure. And I think one of the most interesting things about the Visix alert system is that it can integrate with CAP, the Common Alerting Protocol, which again, it’s a feed. But it’s a feed that only feeds when something happens. And it’s, again, it’s automatic. You’re like, bam, here’s where I am, here’s my zip code, here’s my address, here’s the place. And if, you know, the county or the state or the national emergency services are like, hey, you know, wow, there’s a tornado bearing down on that area, they just send that alert out over their sources, and the digital signs just pick it up automatically.
It might be news to literally everyone, including the person who runs the digital signage. Suddenly, you know, the screens go, hey, tornado alert. And everybody goes, oh, thank goodness we have a plan in place, and now we can start implementing it by using the digital signs to give people instructions, tell them where to go, tell them who to talk to, and so on.
Ellyce Kelly: Every client I’ve worked with is using CAP alerts.
Derek DeWitt: Really?
Ellyce Kelly: Yep.
Derek DeWitt: Ah, that’s fantastic.
It’s really, the world is your oyster when it comes to this stuff. There’s so much available. It’s actually pretty easy to set up. And it can be run by a very small group of people, or sometimes even just a single person, especially if you’re using a lot of these automated feeds of different kinds. And for the people on the receiving end of these digital signage messages, it’s interesting. There’s all this stuff always happening, and yet it’s all relevant. It’s all important or at least somehow associated with where I am, and that’s great.
And it kind of helps create this little info bubble, you know, around the educational facility in some way, shape or form, and make sure that everybody’s on the same page all the time. It’s just kind of this amazing communication system, really. Not just a tool, but it’s a whole system. It’s a whole new way to communicate, which I think is fantastic. And I think for younger students, it certainly meets their expectations and hopefully exceeds their expectations.
Well, I’d like to thank my guest today, Ellyce Kelly, professional services consultant for Visix, for talking to me today about digital signage in educational environments. Thanks, Ellyce! Just a ton of interesting stuff, and it really makes me jealous. I wish I was back in school, so that I could experience all this stuff firsthand.
Ellyce Kelly: Me, too, Derek! Always a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for having me.
Derek DeWitt: Thank you. And thank you again, everyone for listening. I again remind you there is a transcript, as Ellyce mentioned a couple of times, with helpful links on the Visix website. Go check it out.