The Communications Network Hiding on Your School’s Walls

Walk through any school and count the screens. Classrooms. Hallways. The gym. The front office. The cafeteria. Schools have invested in screens across almost every part of their buildings. But how often do they think about those screens as one connected communications network?

In classrooms, they support teaching. In hallways, they keep people informed. In an emergency, they can help get critical instructions to everyone who needs them.

Yet these screens are often managed through completely separate platforms, each designed to do one job.

A screen sharing app in classrooms. Digital signage in the hallways. An announcement system in the office. An alert platform for emergencies.

Each comes with its own console, logins, updates and support requirements. The result? A network of screens that could work together, but rarely does.

There’s a bigger opportunity hiding in plain sight.

Join us for Fewer Tools. More Teaching. On Thursday, November 12, three district technology leaders will share their experiences, alongside a live demonstration of what a more connected approach to school technology looks like.

Save your seat | 12 PM ET / 9 AM PT

Four channels every school already has

Think about the different ways a school communicates throughout the day. The screens are already there. The opportunity is to make them work harder by connecting the different ways schools use them.

Teacher to class. Screens help teachers share lessons wirelessly from anywhere in the room, while students can share their own work from their desks. Add polling, whiteboarding and other interactive tools to make technology part of the learning experience.

School to hallways. Displays keep students, staff and visitors informed with daily schedules, events, reminders, student recognition and visitor information.

Office to building. Announcements can reach one classroom, a specific building or an entire campus, keeping everyone informed without relying on separate systems for different audiences.

Safety team to everyone. Emergency alerts put clear instructions on screens across the relevant locations, helping staff and students understand what to do when it matters most.

These aren’t four separate networks. They’re four ways of making better use of the same screens.

How connected is your school’s network?

Before thinking about replacing anything, take a look at what your school already has.

Here’s a quick exercise you can try in two minutes:

1. List every type of screen in one school building.
2. Next to each, write down the software or system used to manage it.
3. Identify where different tools overlap or where screens are limited to just one function.
4. Count how many platforms it takes to keep everything running.

Now ask yourself: if you needed to change a message across your entire school, how many systems would you need to access?

That gives you an idea of how connected your communications network really is.

Every additional platform brings another system to maintain, another supplier relationship and another place to troubleshoot when something doesn’t work.

But the impact goes beyond IT. Different tools mean different processes for teachers and staff, more time spent navigating technology and less opportunity to make the most of the screens already available.

Consolidation isn’t just about reducing software costs. It’s about reducing complexity and giving people more time to focus on their actual jobs.

What does a connected school actually need?

Bringing everything together sounds straightforward. Making it work across an entire school is another matter.

It’s not enough to put several features under one login. A genuinely connected platform needs to bring different capabilities together without compromising what each one needs to do.

For example:

• Flexibility for teaching: Teachers and students should be able to share from the devices they already use, whether that’s a laptop, tablet or Chromebook.
• Control for IT: Displays need to be managed centrally, with the flexibility to target different content to different locations.
• Communication at every level: Announcements should reach one room, a whole building or multiple campuses, depending on the message.
• The right response for safety: Emergency alerts need to reach the relevant screens, with different responses for different situations. A Hold should allow teaching to continue, while a Lockdown should take over screens with clear instructions.
• One place to manage it all: IT teams need visibility and control without having to jump between multiple platforms.

The aim isn’t simply to do more with fewer tools. It’s to create a more consistent experience for everyone using the technology, while making it easier for IT to manage.

Hear from districts putting it into practice

So what does this look like in a real school environment? And what difference can it make to the people managing and using the technology every day?

That’s what we’ll be exploring in our upcoming webinar, Fewer Tools. More Teaching.

We’re bringing together three district technology leaders, each with their own experience and perspective on school technology:

Peter Emmel, Director of Technology, Randolph Township Schools

Blaine Drouillard, Senior Manager of Information Technology, Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board

Kael Hankins, Executive Director of Technology, Clear Creek Amana Community School District

They’ll be joined by Joe Talaiver, Director of Product & Partnerships, and Trevor Lamme, Director of Solutions Engineering, from Vivi.

The session will combine a panel discussion with a live demonstration, following how one platform can support a school throughout the day, from classroom screen sharing and hallway signage to everyday announcements and emergency alerts.

As Peter Emmel puts it:

“When you see the Vivi splash screen and the four-digit code, people know exactly what to do. I open Vivi, I connect. That’s it.”

You’ll hear directly from district leaders and see what it looks like when these different capabilities work together.

The network is already on the wall

Schools have already invested in the screens. The opportunity now is to stop thinking about them as individual pieces of technology and start treating them as one connected network.

Fewer platforms to manage. More ways to communicate. More time for teaching.

One. Vivi!

Join us live: Thursday, November 12, 12 PM ET / 9 AM PT.

Save your seat for Fewer Tools. More Teaching.