Screechy proclamations like “students, please gather in the concert hall at noon for an important announcement by the principal” emanating from the PA and ringing through the halls of your school may bring back memories from your own school days, but they’re far from ideal.
A lot has changed for the better in tech, but school equipment is not always one of these things. If your school is proactive and has already purchased some new classroom equipment for digital teaching and learning, such as BenQ interactive displays, good news is they come with software that can help you get rid of the old PA system your school still uses.
X-Sign Broadcast is a smart message and content delivery system, bound with BenQ devices like interactive displays.
X-Sign Broadcast allows you to send messages and other content to multiple devices at the same time, either instantly (with interrupt mode) or according to a schedule you set. It is managed remotely from a centralized platform. Your IT admin or even you by yourself can schedule messages from the computer you use for managing your school’s displays, it’s all very easy!
X-Sign Broadcast allows you to send plain text messages, images, or even YouTube videos and live streams. You can use files stored locally or on the cloud. In addition, now you can simply paste a YouTube link as well!
The solution is a great replacement for the PA system, but it’s also much more than that. It can be great for overall school management and as an educational tool.
Scheduling messages can be a great way to send to all or selected devices with smart grouping or tags. You can read more here about these and other functions.
Do you wish to remind everyone about the deadline for registering for that 6th grade trip you’ve been planning? Send a reminder for the last three minutes of each class on the devices you know your 6th graders are looking at.
Trying to promote better hygiene and hand disinfection before and after class in the post-pandemic reality? Set a message popup for the last minute of class on all your school’s displays, as well as hallway signage during breaks.
Do your students have a habit of staying in classrooms during breaks? With X-Sign Broadcast you can push YouTube videos to all or selected displays.
Some of our customers like to use that solution to display a “word of the day” series of videos they’ve created or found on the internet for foreign language learning.
You may also choose to display certain music videos or animations for fun and entertainment. As a social distancing measure, some schools are trying to keep students within classrooms to control the amount of contact they have with other students in hallways and thus try to limit exposure to germs across different classrooms. This can be a good way to give your students additional motivation to stay in their classroom.
With tags and smart grouping, you can show different videos to students of different grades, as naturally your 6th graders are interested in different things than your 1st graders.
Sometimes you need to communicate something RIGHT NOW with the whole school. From serious emergencies like a kitchen fire in the cafeteria to surprise ice cream trucks waiting for your students outside, X-Sign Broadcast is a great way to communicate all that and more!
Use interrupt mode to send instant message to all or selected displays. If you choose to send a text message, we recommend you set a red background and bold fonts to ensure your message is seen. You can also lock the message to make sure teachers don’t swipe up to hide the message by accident or otherwise.
You can also send a video message. Pre-recorded is the safe option here. You can upload your message to YouTube or local or cloud storage, then send it out using interrupt mode. As YouTube also supports live streaming now, X-Sign Broadcast allows you to be seen and heard on each BenQ board at your school simultaneously. How cool is that!
If your school is like most, teacher parent conference days still take place in classrooms that are assigned to teachers. If that’s the case, use broadcasts to display a warm welcome message. Parents for sure will appreciate the nice touch and thought.
You can schedule such messages ahead of time, and use a nice, colorful graphic to display along with your welcome message. Perhaps some simple, custom-made graphic with your school’s logo on it? With free online design tools like Canva it’s never been easier to design attractive graphics in a simple and easy way that you can quickly learn to use.
This simple upgrade is yet another way that interactive displays help you transform your learning spaces into true smart classes. As student engagement is an increasingly demanding task, we encourage you to get creative with your message delivery through X-Sign Broadcast.
Have you found another awesome way to use X-Sign Broadcast? Let us know via the contact form below or see other ways to improve lesson delivery interactivity at your school with our displays.