From EdTech Focus on K-12
“The biggest thing we noticed in emergency situations is that the visual element catches people’s attention,” says Kris Saylor, technology director at Necedah Schools in Wisconsin. “We are able to reach everyone, including deaf students, because the alerts are flashing and multicolored.”
Digital signage displays are the endpoints of a school’s communication system. They are operated through onboard display-on-a-chip software or an external media player that serves as the content management platform. To enable emergency notifications, the digital signage software needs to support Common Alerting Protocol, the standard for communicating emergency alerts and public warnings.
CAP-enabled systems, like the Singlewire Software InformaCast system Necedah Schools uses, are designed to override any communication on the digital signage at the time of an emergency message broadcast. “When administrators push through the emergency communications, it takes over the screen and gets the message in front of everybody quickly,” says Saylor.