Posted by Alicia Shires, Classroom Technology Specialist, Washington and Lee
University
Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Alicia Shires, Classroom
Technology Specialist at Washington
and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.
At Washington and Lee University, we pride ourselves on our clear
communications to everyone on campus—and if we have to cancel or change classes
or events, we want everyone to find out as soon as possible. Our 13 digital
signage screens, positioned in key places across campus like the Commons building
and several dorms, alert staff and students to the events at the University,
along with updates on our sports teams and local weather. When we installed
Google Chromeboxes to replace the crash-prone Windows
machines running the screens, it became much easier to bring news to the campus
while it’s fresh.
The personal computers we were using to run display screens had several problems,
with unreliability at the top of the list. They were slow to update, and would
often crash, leaving the screens completely offline. That meant a delay in
delivering information to students and staff until we could reboot the machines
remotely. The machines were also slow. When we uploaded information to be
displayed, it could take 30 minutes before viewers saw it.
These delays could become a big deal if we wanted to deliver time-sensitive
information to screens, like weather-related campus closings or emergency
situations. Without fast notifications, students and professors could waste time
traveling to classes or events that weren’t happening.We knew we needed better
hardware to solve the problems of speed and instability.
Rise Vision, the
developer of the free, open-source platform we use to create and manage our
display content, suggested we replace the PCs with
managed Chromeboxes. We discovered that because Chromeboxes
run Chrome OS, they update automatically, so updates don’t interfere with the
displays. We can operate Chromeboxes in
Kiosk mode so we can run the digital signage software at
full-screen, which makes our displays look better. Management is largely hands
off. I don’t have to touch the boxes and the reboots are fast and automatic.
Each Chromebox is several hundred dollars less than one of the PCs we were using
before, so that’s a big plus for us. They’re extremely reliable and
super-fast—when I upload new content from my office, it appears almost
immediately on the campus display screens. It’s hard to believe I’m not working
directly on the Chromeboxes themselves. They’re also powerful enough to run rich
media like HD 1080P videos without choppy playback.
Perhaps the best thing about using Chromeboxes for our screens is that we’ve
finally been able to kick our emergency notification system into high gear. If we
go through another difficult winter, we can quickly push out emergency notices
about schools closings, weather delays, and event cancellations. Operating our
screens with fast, reliable Chromeboxes is helping us keep everyone on campus not
just well-informed, but safe and sound.