Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Digital Signage
Signing Up
4/1/2007
Community College of Southern Nevada, and the University of Massachusetts- Boston are using the technology to replace the old-fashioned approach of communicating via paper flyers. Others, including Texas State University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, are following the same route Creighton has taken, and have built networks of digital signs that mix campus news with news from the outside world. All of the approaches are turning heads.How It Works
No discussion of digital signage can begin without at least a rudimentary explanation of what the technology is, and how it works. First, some context: If you’ve been to a modernized airport in the last few years and have checked the status of your flight, you likely have seen digital signage in action. Instead of pertaining to planes, however, in higher education the data refer to meetings, graduation and sporting events, or the like. The technology revolves around displays that are big enough for passersby to see, without stopping or slowing down. It also offers schools the ability to incorporate images, and flip one image after another. Depending on the quality of the screen resolution, these screens can cost anywhere from $500 to $5,000 apiece.
DIGITAL SIGNAGE IDEA: NO STAFF NEEDED
Cisco's new Digital Media Management tools (designed to work with NEC digital displays) are the first designed to work with specific hardware, offering schools the opportunity to purchase everything in one fell swoop. The tools (tiny hardware devices and software that lives in the data center) work together and have the capacity to push content to dozens of digital signs at a time. They eliminate the need for schools to assign staff to upload content sign by sign.
From the user perspective, the hardware appears to be the focal point. But behind the scenes, each display is connected to some variation of computer. In some cases, the computers are regular PCs; in other cases, they are thin clients. The computers are web-enabled, and are patched into the internet wirelessly or via a standard Ethernet connection. Elsewhere on the network—usually in a back room—a server stores data for display on the screens and feeds that information to each display unit individually (or to a networked loop of displays), via the web. The upload process can occur or be scheduled intermittently, or can take place in real time.
Currently, there are a number of products and services to manage content and orchestrate uploads. Perhaps the most common of these solutions come from Access Television Network and VBrick Systems, two vendors better known for delivering digital video over the internet. In January, Cisco Systems jumped into the fray as well, with two products specially designed to work in conjunction with LCD screens from NEC. The announcement created a good deal of buzz: While the nascent digital signage space has attracted some heavy hitters, Cisco was the heaviest, up to that point.
Recommended Reading
- CT Industry
- CT Solutions
- Cut to the Core
- DAM-ing the Digital Flood
- Get The Word Out
The market’s teeming with products to help you alert your campus community on any number of fronts. Now you just have to pick the right ones and get everyone signed up.
- Thwarting the Copycats
New tools are helping colleges and universities counter burgeoning paper mill sites, pervasive internet content, and persistent student ingenuity.
