Elkhart Community Schools, an Indiana school district serving approximately 12,000 students, has adopted an integrated digital signage system from Carousel Cloud, according to a press release.
The system sends targeted content to each department, such as art and athletics, using JAMF to integrate securely with and push content to Apple devices and it uses RSS feeds to notify the IT department of any technical issues for proactive service by a small IT staff. The system also handles conference room reservations along with built-in weather and news information and can handle integration with external systems like SingleWire’s InformaCast emergency alert system, which the district is currently integrating. Of interest to many content managers in the education sector, Carousel offers integration with Google suite, which is popular among many districts thanks to the rise of Chromebooks and GSuite usage among school systems.
«We’re a Google shop, and it’s been easy to merge Carousel with Google. I don’t have to set up an additional account for the users that are responsible for developing and distributing content,» Stephen DeCook, technology deployment administrator for Eckhard Community Schools, said in the release. «It’s easy to configure, and they offer a ton of information. And, whenever I’ve needed additional help and reached out to Carousel, their support has been excellent.»
DeCook credits the popularity of the system among staff to the easy learning curve of the software for users of varying technical skill, along with its accessibility features like multimedia displays. «We have a large community of English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) students, and the food services staff, for example, is excited about being able to display visuals alongside menu listings to help those individuals understand the content more easily,» DeCook said in the release.