School and campus screens
School and campus screens
The screen in a school entrance is read by three different audiences in the same minute — students, staff and a visitor who has never been in the building — and most of them fail because they are written for only one.
Write for the visitor first
Students learn the building in a week and stop reading the signage. Staff already know. The person who genuinely depends on the entrance screen is the parent, contractor or candidate who has never been there — so a directory and a today-at-a-glance panel earn their place ahead of anything aspirational.
That is also the argument for keeping a calendar on it. A date on the screen is a date nobody has to ask reception about.
Countdowns work here in a way they rarely do elsewhere
A countdown is usually filler. In a school it is not: exam dates, a trip deadline, an application cut-off and the end of term are all real deadlines shared by a whole cohort, and a number that goes down is a better reminder than a notice that has been up so long it has stopped being visible.
Who updates it, and what happens in August
The screen that fails is the one only one person can change. Sheencast has per-user access, so the office can update notices without touching anything else — worth setting up on day one, because a display maintained by a single busy person becomes a display showing last term.
Plan for the holidays too. A screen showing an event from three weeks ago is worse than a screen showing nothing, so either schedule content to expire or park the display on something dateless.
Templates that fit
Event Announcement 1
Single upcoming events, community boards, small venues
7 editable fields
Countdown Timer 2
Conference stages, retail promotions, event lobbies
20 editable fields
Directory
Office lobbies, medical centers, multi-tenant buildings
9 editable fields
Town Hall Reminder
All-hands, staff briefings, member meetings, AGMs
22 editable fields
What three free screens covers
The free plan runs 3 screens with no time limit and no card. For a lot of the sites on this page that is the whole installation. Past that, $29 a month covers 25 screens — flat, not per screen — so the fourth display costs the same as the twenty-fifth. Full detail on the pricing page.
One honest limitation
Be clear about what this is not: it is not an emergency notification system. The alert template is a content item somebody publishes, with the same delivery guarantees as any other — it is not tied to an alarm panel, it does not override a screen automatically, and it should not appear in a safeguarding or lockdown plan as a channel you rely on.
Other use cases
Waiting room screens · Retail and storefront screens · Warehouse and production floor screens · Hotel and hospitality screens · Digital menu boards · Office and lobby screens · Gym and studio screens · All use cases