Lansing Catholic High School (est. 1970), located in Lansing, Michigan, is a private Catholic school that serves students throughout grades 9-12 and has a student body of over 450 students.
Having this many students who need to stay up to date on upcoming events and school policies requires effective and efficient means of communication.
This is where Claire Boomer, Lansing Catholic High School’s Enrollment Coordinator & Marketing Strategist, comes in.
Claire Boomer - Lansing Catholic High School's Automation Expert
After achieving a communications degree and exploring a few different roles in marketing, Claire accepted a position at Lansing Catholic High School, which is also where she went to high school.
Claire is uniquely positioned because, as a past student, she has an intimate understanding of how Lansing Catholic High School communicates with its students.
After accepting her new role as Enrollment Coordinator & Marketing Strategist, Claire was given a lot of flexibility to make changes and bring innovations to Lansing Catholic High School.
Claire is very forward-thinking, appreciates the advantages of new technology, and recognizes the power of automation and how it can be used to ensure a high level of communication.
“Rise Vision offered a lot of what we were looking for. They allowed us to display different messaging depending on where each display was located, which was great! Then, they added the one thing I wished for: schedule overrides. What a great addition.
There was a reunion group that just visited over the weekend. Because the schedule override feature was available, I set it to override our regular messaging while they were around and didn't even have to remember to take it off.”
— Claire Boomer, Enrollment Coordinator & Marketing Strategist, Lansing Catholic High School..jpg?width=730&height=411&name=template%20(3).jpg)
The Transition to Cloud Digital Signage at Lansing
When Claire started in 2021, Lansing Catholic High School had computers connected next to their displays using an HDMI cable.
This meant if she ever wanted to change messaging on her displays, she had to stop what she was doing, leave her office, and walk across the school to update each display.
This took Claire’s time and energy and disrupted her focus. Claire knew there had to be a better way, so she researched and discovered the solution: remote display management.
Claire and her colleagues researched a variety of different offerings. They chose Rise Vision because Rise Vision gave them more useful features and provided better scheduling options at the best price.
Claire especially appreciates the schedule override feature, which allows her to display specific content for a fixed period without needing to start or stop scheduled content on her displays manually.
How to Use Schedule Overrides
Here’s how schedule overrides work.
Lansing Catholic High School has built a regular content schedule that plays for their students on their displays during the week.
The displays show content for upcoming events (like reminders for upcoming Christmas vacations or reminders to wear costumes on Halloween), school policies (such as dress codes and assembly reminders), and more.
This content rotates on the displays, is automatically scheduled, and runs continuously.
Sometimes students from partner K-8 schools will visit Lansing Catholic High School, and they need directions. Since the visiting school is only around for a few hours, and Claire doesn’t want to reconfigure her scheduled content, Claire uses the schedule override feature to interrupt the regularly scheduled content for a fixed period of time.
Claire creates personalized content to welcome visiting students or families. Then, Claire schedules her content to override her regularly scheduled content on the display at the front entrance lobby for the hours the visiting students are at the school.
Once the students leave, her displays automatically return to displaying content for Lansing Catholic High School students without her lifting a finger.
What once required Claire to be in school and leave her office to update displays before the visiting students arrived is now done in one action over just a few minutes.
Benefits of Cloud-Based Digital Signage
Because Rise Vision is cloud-based and can be operated from anywhere (even home), Claire doesn’t have to be in school to schedule content.
This increases her ability to be responsive in surprise scenarios and maintain her school’s communication professionalism.
This was especially important during COVID lockdowns when she could update displays with content from home.
Rise Vision saves Claire time, allows her to focus, and gives Lansing Catholic High School the confidence to operate its communications strategies with a previously unattainable proficiency.
"Before Rise Vision, students and visitors didn't know about certain things going on in our school.
Being able to send different content to each display (like at the front entrance or cafeteria) allowed us to tailor our messaging to the most relevant audience who would be looking at those screens and improve our communication"
— Claire Boomer, Enrollment Coordinator & Marketing Strategist, Lansing Catholic High School.
Enhancing Community with Students Example
She also recognized using Rise Vision would be an excellent opportunity to improve communication and build community with students.
Scheduling important content on cafeteria displays was hugely beneficial because she observed that her students are used to paying attention to TVs while they eat.
Being able to schedule content based on the location of a display independently is valuable to Claire because it allows her to focus high-priority student-focused messaging to locations where she knows her students are paying attention, like displays in her cafeteria.
Improved Focus - An Unintended Benefit
An unintended benefit of implementing Rise Vision was improved focus and efficiency of administrative staff.
Since displays always showed the most accurate, up-to-date information, the number of questions administrative staff faced from visitors and students decreased.
This reduced the number of times staff was interrupted, which improved focus, efficiency, and effectiveness.
Improved Accuracy of Communication
Being in a school environment, Claire faces many unexpected surprises, from fire alarms going off, unexpected announcements/meetings, parents calling in with questions, and more.
In an environment where staff are responsible for manually updating displays in hallways, these interruptions can make it difficult to ensure all displays show the right content at the right time.
This is where automation of display content helps her.
Being able to count on Rise Vision’s automated scheduling and playlist features (combined with schedule overrides) gives Claire the confidence that her messaging will remain consistent even when she’s not there, and viewers, whether students or visitors, will still get the relevant information they need regardless of interruptions.
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