NEAAAT Charter School, where Kids run Announcements. Vivi made that possible!

Executive Summary 

Northeast Academy for Aerospace and Advanced Technologies (NEAAAT) is not a typical school. It’s a public charter school built inside a converted shopping mall in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. It’s a Title I, project-based learning institution where teachers are called coaches and learning looks like a lab, and a student’s voice is at the center of all functions. 

When NEAAAT developed its new strategic plan, students led the process. One of their clearest asks: real daily announcements. Not an intercom, not a pre-recorded video, but a live broadcast that felt like theirs. 

That request sent Director of Culture and Communications, Karrie Chappell, looking for the right technology. What she found was Vivi, and what she got was more than she expected. 

Today, NEAAAT runs a student-produced morning broadcast every day. Middle schoolers serve as writers, producers, and anchors. A 12-year-old runs the program. Karrie describes her role as “just the adult in the room.”  

NEA

AAT’s story is a proof point for every charter school, PBL environment, and student-centered campus asking whether technology can actually keep up with how they operate. It can 

At NEAAAT, Vivi’s single platform delivers a campus operating system that powers: 

• Active crisis response 
• Unified campus communications 
• Measurable student impact  
• Real budget protection with higher value upside

Built for How Charter and PBL Schools Actually Work 

Charter schools and project-based learning (PBL) environments don’t run like traditional districts. Devices are mixed. Spaces are flexible. Students present, collaborate, and share constantly. The technology has to keep up. Most of it doesn’t. 

“Sometimes we get sold on great tech, and the learning curve is so overwhelming, people don’t use it. Vivi is the opposite of that. Every member of our staff is using it.” 

— Karrie Chappell, Director of Culture and Communications, Northeast Academy for Aerospace and Advanced Technologies 

NEAAAT runs MacBooks for upperclassmen, Chromebooks for underclassmen, and staff use both MacBooks and HP computers. Vivi works across all of them. No dongles, no compatibility dead ends. 

In a PBL school where students regularly stand and present their work, the cable-to-TV drag-and-drop workaround that Chromebooks require is a friction point that kills momentum. Vivi removes it. 

“Students being able to take over the TV in the room and present their information in real time, without the dongle, and mine doesn’t match — that accessibility has been really helpful.” 

As the campus expands across buildings, Vivi seamlessly keeps everyone connected for positive school culture and continued continuity. 

”It keeps those two campuses connected really easily. And it does so much more than we realized when we signed on.” 

One Platform, Every Corner of Campus 

NEAAAT came to Vivi for live morning broadcasts. What they found was a platform that kept expanding to meet them. 

“We just kept uncovering layers of the onion. It was like, oh, cool — the front office can message across your TV screen, ‘hey, send Joey to the office,’ and they can time those individual messages to places instead of trying to call a room or interrupt. We didn’t know that when we first signed on.” 

Today, Vivi runs across both NEAAAT campuses. Every classroom, the main office, hallway displays, and the multipurpose space. Visual emergency alert takeovers run during fire drills. The science teacher projects iPad annotations via the whiteboard feature without a smart board. Parent meetings run simultaneously in-person and virtually run through a single computer. A school social ran on a Vivi-powered playlist with no ads and no fuss. 

“We had a school social, and I created a playlist and sent out Just Dance videos on the large screens. I didn’t have to worry about ads, I didn’t have to worry about any of that. I could put that in and it could roll.” 

Student Voice Drove It 

NEAAAT didn’t come to Vivi because an IT department had a problem. Students asked for something better, and the school went and built it. 

“Our school is very much about student voice — they kind of drive the direction of where things are going. When we were putting together our new strategic plan, all of our students gave feedback into that process. And one of them was: we want daily announcements.” 

The existing announcement system wasn’t the answer. Neither was pre-recorded video. Students wanted something live, student-led, and worth watching. 

The previous scrolling signage system, a Samsung Business solution, required downloading content to a specific phone and using a dedicated app. It just didn’t always work. 

“Sometimes it would talk to it, and sometimes it wouldn’t. With Vivi, I can update it from anywhere. I don’t have to be standing in front of that TV to get it to work. I can do that from home on the weekends — I was working remotely in the mountains the other weekend, and I could still do it.” 

Students Don’t Just Use It — They Run It 

The most direct expression of what Vivi made possible at NEAAAT isn’t a feature. It’s a 12-year-old running a live morning broadcast while Karrie sits in the back of the room. 

Karrie worked with a student to build the morning announcement program from scratch, including team structure, interview process, and role rotation. The program now has student writers, producers, and anchors. Middle schoolers own it. 

“We have writers and producers and anchors, and they switch their roles, and they take that very seriously. The middle school students are really the ones who have driven that process.

I think I was most excited about the fact that it worked right away, and kids could do it. If I was going to be off campus, I know the kids have it. They know where to put the equipment, how to turn it on, what to do with it, how to send it out.

I have a 12-year-old kid who’s running it. He’s running the program, and I’m just the adult.”