SIGN OF THE TIMES

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SIGN OF THE TIMES

4/24/2006

Schools say farewell to fliers, and hello to new digital signage technology from NEC

Until recently, administrators at Morton College (IL) put in a lot of effort to communicate with their 5,000 students about new classes and other campus announcements. They’d take out advertisements in the student newspaper. They’d print up fliers and tape or staple them to message boards all over campus. The effort was so labor-intensive, that some officials say they’d spend just as much time announcing news as they’d spend planning for it. If the school wanted to improve the lines of communication with students, something had to be done, quickly.

That something was spurred by President Brent Knight, who in the beginning of this year commissioned school officials to find a way to enhance campus communications. With this directive, officials set out to find a strategy to improve communications across the board. Their solution? To trade in paper fliers for digital signs that could cycle a variety of dynamic, video-based messages to students throughout the day. Jason Kovac, assistant dean of academic affairs, says the technology is a perfect way to distribute messages without going through the rigmarole of physically distributing them.

“Our students live and think visually, so we figured digital signs would be the best way to appeal to this digital generation,” he says. “So far, the solution has worked well.”

Morton College is not alone; today, across the country, academic institutions large and small are turning to digital signage to deliver news, messages and other forms of content across campus in new and exciting ways. While a variety of vendors sell only the display devices for this solution, only a handful sell the combination of display and back-end software/hardware to manage the distribution of the message, as well. NEC, famous for integrated networking and communication solutions, is one such vendor, and has made significant headway in the higher education market in recent months.

How It Works

The heart of the NEC Digital Signage Solution is the open source BlueFire® VC Digital Signage Controller, an IP/Ethernet network addressable device that is used in conjunction with the display signage such as Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) and Plasma Display Panels (PDPs) that come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The ability of the BlueFire VC to be either LAN or WLAN connected offers the flexibility of placing signs wherever there is AC power access. The BlueFire VC receives content, scheduling and other instructions from a central site for controlling and monitoring multiple individual displays. Scala® content creation software enables customers to turn ordinary graphic and text files into content that can be displayed on a digital sign. Russell Young, solutions manager for digital signage at NEC, says that this triumvirate of technologies would enable any school to start up a digital signage effort in no time. The scalable architecture makes it easy to start small and expand the system over time to meet a campus’s communication requirements.