Schools are always bustling with activity. From pep rallies, after school clubs, extra-curricular activities, to students going from period to period, schools are one of the busiest types of facilities with tons of people in them, including staff. Keeping both staff and students informed of upcoming school code changes, schedule switches, and emergency broadcasts is important to keep everyone safe and in the loop about everyday functions, and digital signage can help make the process smoother.
Digital signage is great to use in quick-service restaurants, the hospitality industry, and healthcare, but what about in education? Not only can this useful form of technology be placed in classrooms, but in the hallways, and even in the break room for staff-related updates too. It can be a lifesaver in emergencies or simply be used for everyday updates, but in what other ways can it help?
Here are some of the best ways to use digital signage to keep your staff and students in the loop!
1. Updates on School Announcements
The simple and most effective way to keep staff and students in the know!
It’s crucial to keep your staff and students up to date on important dates, events, school delays, updates on group activities, and other updates throughout the day. While making an announcement over the PA system can be effective, it can sometimes be hard to understand the individual speaking over it, or people can simply forget what was said as the day goes on.
In order to keep staff and students informed about daily updates and announcements, why not use digital signage? Lots of content management systems (CMS) come with pre-made templates that make content creation easier than ever before where you can post updates on the year’s football schedule, time of different sports practices, homecoming and prom dates and ticket sales, and even announce club and other extracurricular activity updates on meeting times or cancellations.
2. Emergency Alerts
Ensure the safety of your staff and students with instant, real-time updates and emergency routes!
Has a fire broken out in the cafeteria? Is there a tornado drill for your students to practice in case of a real-life situation? Or is there a medical emergency that needs to be addressed? No matter the type of emergency, emergency alerts can be posted to digital signage to ensure the safety of both your staff and students.
Emergencies are not something that schools want to traumatize their staff or students with, but it’s important to take the proper precautions in order to keep them safe. Digital signage has the capability to update in real-time to reflect important news and alerts, and it can even save a life in emergency situations. From posting navigation routes for a fire drill, important things to keep in mind in case of a lockdown, or even simple instructions for medical personnel entering the building, digital signage is easy-to-see and taken seriously in a time of need.
3. Show the Cafeteria Menu
For students and staff that buy lunch or forget their own, show off the cafeteria menu for them to mull over their options!
When trying to find the best digital signage content to post in your school, we often think of important events and emergencies, but it can be useful for other things too. It’s important for all students to eat lunch at a designated time throughout the day, and it’s also a great time for staff to do the same as well. Easy content for digital signage could be something as simple as displaying the cafeteria menu throughout the day and in the lunch room too.
There are days where kids often forget to grab their lunch before running out the door, and even for staff to do the same thing. Not sure of what’s on the menu? Showing off the cafeteria menu is an essential way to kick off the day and makes for an easy form of communication between everyone in the building.
4. School Spirit Highlights
Show the reasons just why your school is the best with essential school spirit highlights!
Showing school spirit is not only important for students, but for staff as well as it helps to bring everyone together to create a supportive and positive community. School spirit highlights can be a great way to show just how students and staff celebrate their school colors, sports teams, band and theater performances, and other extra-curricular activities.
Getting students and staff excited about your school is crucial and this can be done by showing how other people get into the spirit of celebrating football wins, other school sports, and even important band, orchestra, and theater productions. This is creating content to showcase everyone’s most festive outfits with the school colors, making signs for one of the sports teams, or even making an announcement about purchasing tickets to an event on campus.
5. Mental Health Awareness
Focusing on your mental health is crucial for both staff and students, and reminders for taking care of yourself are much needed!
One of the most important things that you can do is putting yourself first and taking care of your mental and physical well-being. It can be so easy for students and staff to get caught up in drama, overworking yourself, resulting in complete burnout from trying to hit grading deadlines or study for exams. Your mental health is important no matter what age you are, which is why mental health awareness reminders on digital signage are crucial in all school systems.
It can be easy to put other responsibilities, tasks, and every day shenanigans that life throws at us first, but a simple digital signage reminder can be a great way to put your mental health at the forefront of your mind. From reminders to step away from your cell phone screen, mental health resources to talk to a counselor, or even encouraging quotes can be an uplifting way for both staff and students to use a reminder to take care of themselves–and it’s all done with a digital signage screen!
6. Student and Staff Recognition
Paying special attention to your staff and students and recognizing them for their achievements is an incredible mood booster!
Everyone likes to feel appreciated for the goals that they achieve and the hard work and dedication that they put into job or school responsibilities. Whether it’s to be used throughout the hallways or in individual classrooms, digital signage can be a great way to appreciate those around you that work endlessly to help the students to achieve their goals or to simply show that their persistence paid off.
There are numerous examples that can be used to recognize both students and staff through digital signage. Employee spotlights are a key way to make sure that teachers, administration, and maintenance staff feel appreciated, and you can have a picture of them and the reason for the spotlight. This is also a great tactic to use for students in classrooms or schoolwide as well where you can give a shoutout to the person who scored the highest on the latest exam, or recognize ones that have drastically improved their grades over the semester.
7. Interactive QR Codes
Not only is feedback from students crucial, but also staff, and digital signage can allow everyone to have a voice!
One thing is true and it’s that people appreciate when others are actually listening to them, taking in any feedback or criticisms, and applying it to make something better. For schools, this could go to almost anything, such as what the pros and cons of this year’s homecoming was, themes to an upcoming spirit week, or even votes on who won “Best [category]” in the yearbook. Instead of handing out paper and pencils for people to cast their votes, digital signage can take polls and surveys to the next level with interactive QR codes.
If you’re looking to get your students and staff more involved within the school, making sure that their opinion can be heard is crucial. With interactive QR codes, staff and students can easily scan them with their cell phones and then be led to a website to cast their vote for an interactive poll or complete a survey. Something as simple as this can help boost overall morale among faculty and students because they feel as if their voice is heard and significant changes–no matter how small or big–can be made.
Shift: Your All-In-One CMS Buddy For Making a Positive Impact Within Your School District
When choosing the best digital signage CMS platform to create content with, choose Shift for your school district!
For your school district, digital signage can be at the top of the list of things that you need to install to get your students and staff more engaged and motivated throughout the day, but choosing the best CMS platform is step one. Shift is a useful CMS platform that comes with easy tools to create content with, along with the essential Content Navigator to upload everything in real-time–plus more!
What Makes Shift Unique Compared to Other CMS Platforms?
Choosing the right digital signage content creation and management platform can be quite difficult if you’re not sure exactly where to start. Many CMS platforms often incorporate Java or other coding programs, but if you’re looking for a beginner-friendly program, Shift is among the best to choose. Shift makes creating content for your district easy with pre-made templates to incorporate the school colors and logo, along with the ability to update content in real-time in case of crucial updates or emergencies.
Shift features the Content Navigator tool, which gives you full control of when your content is posted, along with providing on-demand communication when it is most needed. With Shift, users can boost overall school morale with both students and staff by helping to create a well-informed environment that allows everyone to have a voice.
Crucial Features Shift Offers That Can Help in School Districts
Shift offers a wide variety of unique features that can play a huge role in the success of any school district for either their staff, students, or both. Here are some of the best features that Shift has to offer:
- Boost employee engagement through recognition and appreciation
- Celebrate staff birthdays, work anniversaries, and other achievements
- Show training videos
- Employee spotlights
- Interactive polls for staff to anonymously complete
- Expands internal communications
- Allows staff to retrain and re-skill in key trainings
- Helps leaders learn more about staff
- Encourages employees to do work harder
- Increases productivity
- Create diverse content using pictures, videos, or documents
- Use as a wayfinding and navigation system
- Broadcast company announcements, updated policies, etc.
- Use to post emergency alerts
- Streamline workflow and post frequent updates about each day’s tasks
Choose Shift and Use Digital Signage to Engage with Students and Staff–and Keep Them in the Loop!
Digital signage is the type of technology that all schools need. Not only can it help to better engage with students, but it can even boost the morale of staff, increase communications, and help everyone to stay on page with crucial district updates or emergency alerts.
Consider using Shift paired with your digital signage to create dynamic content and keep your students and staff informed!
