Rise Vision for Schools: Digital Signage, Emergency Alerts, and Screen Sharing

Jeffrey Bradbury (00:00)

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Teacher Cast Educational Network. My name is Jeff Bradbury. Thank you so much for joining us today and making Teacher Cast your home for professional development. On today's episode of Teacher Cast, we start a the first of a three-part video series with our friends at RiseVision.

RiseVision helps you communicate, teach, and improve safety affordability with easy cloud-based digital storage, screen sharing, and emergency alerts, all backed by world-class support and flexible hardware options.

Most schools struggle to communicate effectively and keep their students engaged. RiseVision provides an easy to use platform with digital signage, screen sharing, and emergency alerts to improve communication, teaching, and create a positive school culture. For more information about this series and to view all of our episodes, please visit teachercast.net slash risevision today.

Jeffrey Bradbury (00:49)

My guest today is an account executive at RiseVision, and for the last thirteen years, he's had the opportunity to help school districts integrate Rise Vision to support communication and help out when emergencies arise.

I'd like to welcome today to the program Mr. Blake Freeman. Blake, how are you today? Welcome to Teacher Cast.

Blake Freeman (01:05)

Thanks for having me, Jeff. I really appreciate you having me on, inviting me to be here and looking forward to discussing it.

Jeffrey Bradbury (01:11)

It is great having you here today. Of course, we're talking all about RiseVision. ⁓ first of all, for those who aren't familiar with the platform, what is RiseVision?

Blake Freeman (01:22)

Yeah, it's a great question. We are a digital signage, screen sharing, and emergency alert ⁓ communications company. Those are our three main pillars. We're focused on K-12 education. ⁓ so if you have a message to communicate to your school, to your entire district, or just to your classroom, we make it really, really easy to do that on any screen that you have handy.

Jeffrey Bradbury (01:45)

Now, the nice thing I like about Rise Vision, and I've had an obviously had the chance to check it out and and you know, test drive it. And I've I've known the company for many years here. You guys have the ability to not only be interactive in the classroom, but really this is a platform for the whole school, for the whole community, something that a a school district would purchase for multiple buildings. Am I pretty much on the online there?

Blake Freeman (02:09)

Yeah, absolutely. So schools and districts are using us ⁓ in different ways, but universally what you'll find is common areas, entryways, ⁓ areas like cafeterias, gymnasiums, they will have digital signage. And that will be one of the the pillars of what we offer. ⁓ student recognition, communications, announcements, and then awesome auto-updating templates so you can set it and forget it and always have new content up in those common areas.

And then when it comes to the classroom, it's more about communicating with the students, recognizing the students that are there, assigning homework, using our screen sharing, and if an emergency hits, getting that emergency out to the classrooms quickly in an understandable way on the screen so the teachers, the students, everybody can be ⁓ aware and be involved in being safe and either locking down or evacuating or just taking notice of what's going on.

Jeffrey Bradbury (03:05)

And you know, I was noticing this, I was in a ⁓ my local high school a couple weeks ago for like a big STEM event. Every single hallway had a screen. Every single hallway had one of those, you know, you are here, this is the calendar, this is the day, ⁓ happy birthday to. How difficult is this to set up as a campus or as a school district to deploy it to multiple buildings? Is this something that takes a lot of time? How how do you put all this stuff together?

Blake Freeman (03:33)

Yeah, I think that's the most ⁓ most concerning thing for most IT teams or school districts that are doing this. They're worried this is this rollout's gonna take forever. We're gonna have to set up each TV individually. We have mass rollout tools that make it a one-day project. ⁓ you can continue using Google Slides if that's your thing. Tons of schools are using Google Slides, Canva, PowerPoint, all of those things integrate right into Rise Vision, and then we build on top of that.

The not only can you have the Google Slides there and the PowerPoint and the Canva, you can have time date and weather. You can have an RSS feed. You can plug in your Google Calendar and cycle through that. You can plug in your your meta pages, Instagram, Facebook pages, scroll through those, do some student recognition with like graduation announcements with the templates that we have pre built. We've got seven hundred and fifty pre built templates that make it incredibly easy to get new signage up on your screen. You're not reinventing the wheel every time you wanna

you know, host an event or count down the summer or, you know, do a word search like what's behind me right now. It's incredibly simple. Updating it should take less than about five minutes a day. ⁓ and the setup, initial setup is incredibly easy. We've got some tools for the larger districts as well to help them roll out to all those dozens of schools they may have.

Jeffrey Bradbury (04:51)

And I think one of the things that most school districts are thinking about this summer is how do I take the infrastructure that we have and update it? Right. If if you're a Microsoft school, Google School, Canva, whatever it is, you they don't have to put the investment into the hardware. All they need to do is just contact you and say, How do we get started?

Blake Freeman (05:02)

Mm-hmm.

Right. If

Exactly. So we're fairly hardware agnostic. So if you're a Windows school, if you're a Google school and you've got Chrome bits or Chrome boxes running around, ⁓ you can reutilize those for Rise Vision. You can use Raspberry Pi, you can use our media player, which is an Android-based media player, you can use TVs or interactive flat panels with Android built in. Just download the app to it. It's incredibly simple.

Jeffrey Bradbury (05:38)

So Blake, when it comes to bringing in Rise Vision into a school or to a school district, what does that look like financially? Is it by building, by student? How how do you guys price it out?

Blake Freeman (05:47)

Yeah, we're very flexible on ⁓ subscription models. So ⁓ up until you get to about 10 displays, ⁓ it's best to go individual. So it's per endpoint per display. each display would have its own license that you subscribe to every year, renews on the same date. And then when you get to 10 or so displays, you want to go with a site license. So that's for the schools that are heavily invested in digital signage in their common areas.

Maybe they got five or six in the cafeteria, and then they have all these interactive flat panels in the classrooms that they want to communicate on as well. It's one low price for the entire school. it doesn't matter how many students you have in the school, it's still gonna be the same price. And those prices are are tiered based on how many schools you enroll to. So the more schools you enroll, the less you'll pay per school.

Jeffrey Bradbury (06:36)

You know, it's it's amazing how the technology has come over the last couple of years. I remember first getting introduced to Rise Vision a couple of years ago as an administrator. And one of the first questions that was asked when I was speaking with your representatives is how are you utilizing all of the screens that are in? And I realized that the district I was in was really underutilizing the technology. How are you seeing this change between

Pre-rise vision and school districts that are using it. I'm imagining that many school districts are not taking full advantage of those screens that are in the holys.

Blake Freeman (07:10)

Yeah, that's the the first question I ask whenever I talk to somebody that that comes in and asks for more information is how are you using your screens already? You'd be surprised how many people ⁓ how many schools maybe have black screens on the wall that just aren't showing anything, or they're using a USB drive to to manually update a slideshow on the screen and it gets updated once a quarter at best. and then you have all of these interactive flat panel displays in the classrooms that are

a glorified screen sharing device at the end of the day, maybe it gets used for a whiteboard. with Rise Vision, you're gonna have great signage, great looking signage up all the time because we we provide you 750 plus templates that you can easily modify. Most of our templates you can modify in five clicks or less. And you can get, you know, your student picture, your student name up there ⁓ really, really easily. You'll have new content which brings eyes to those displays every single day. ⁓ and then in the classroom ⁓

I find about thirty percent of teachers actually utilize the digital signage aspect in their classroom. Otherwise, they're using RiseVision screen sharing, and then the district and school are using our emergency alerts and announcements features. those are really powerful because whatever the teacher is doing on their interactive flat panel, whether they're screen sharing to it or they're using a learning app, maybe they have a whiteboard up and they're doing something.

⁓ if there's an emergency or a scheduled announcement, let's say you do a ⁓ an announcement live stream every morning, we'll interrupt whatever's going on on that interactive flat panel and show that announcement or that emergency alert. when it's done, when it's cleared, or when the announcements end, it'll go back to whatever the teacher was doing before. ⁓ you're really getting ⁓ multiple multiple uses out of out of one type of device, which is the goal here. ⁓ and then of course those hallways, they're being utilized for.

For all types of things. ⁓ event event showcasing and and student ⁓ recognition. I keep bringing up student recognition because it's incredibly important to to our our schools that are already using Rise Vision. That's one of the things I always hear about. Students love seeing themselves on the screen, especially elementary and middle school. They love seeing themselves on the screen being recognized. The staff love seeing themselves on the screen being recognized.

Jeffrey Bradbury (09:28)

Let's jump back into something that you mentioned because I remember again, you know, figuring out if this was the right platform for my school, which it was. You had talked a little bit back there about the emergencies, right? We do fire drills. We do, you know, in the corner drills, but the ability for a school or a school district not to make this huge announcement, God forbid, and everybody in the school, whether the board is on or not.

It flashes, it runs, whatever it does, and everybody is alerted that something's happening. Stay safe. How does that work and why is that feature either a underutilized, but B, why is that feature so important to you guys?

Blake Freeman (10:13)

Yeah,

that's that's a great point. So ⁓ I believe it's underutilized because most schools think that what they already have is probably enough. when in some cases it it may be, but you gotta think about it. The way the way announcements are made now is usually emails and text messages, which can be delayed. ⁓ and then the PA system. PA system and alarm systems. ⁓ PA systems, ⁓ a lot of them are getting ⁓

Pretty long in the tooth. I talk to to school systems all the time that have decades old PA systems. So you see inconsistencies there. When you bolster it with visual, ⁓ visual emergency alerts and announcements, ⁓ you're you're backing up what you already have and you're making it completely visible to the teacher in the classroom, regardless of what's going on. And maybe it's a really loud atmosphere, like a weightlifting room or a gymnasium.

You can't count on the PA system being loud enough to alert everybody, but if they see it on the screen that's right in front of them, ⁓ they're more likely to s respond and and act.

Jeffrey Bradbury (11:23)

You know, we see in schools somebody gets on the announcements and says, Teachers check your emails. Sometimes that's not the best way to handle communication, right?

Blake Freeman (11:33)

Yeah, no, absolutely not. And ⁓ and we believe that that making every screen in front of students and staff a communication endpoint is really one of the best ways to do that. especially because you deal with with kids that are are visually impaired sometimes. You deal with with ⁓ kids that can't hear ⁓ as well. So getting that in front of them bright in bright lights and clear text ⁓ is definitely ⁓

a great way to ⁓ to communicate and complement your existing system.

Jeffrey Bradbury (12:08)

You had mentioned something earlier a couple of times, which was, you know, student recognition. I love going to, again, I'm gonna just gonna highlight my local school district here, but you go to the band concerts, you go to this the chorus concerts, and on their panels outside of the auditorium, they're throwing up the concert, they're throwing up the program, they're throwing up bloopers from the the rehearsals. Using and making use of that, it really does become community.

Blake Freeman (12:12)

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (12:37)

You know, interaction on that because now when I go into the place, it's there. I I'll just give you another example. Like we had to show up an hour and a half early the other day for my for my kids' concert because they had to rehearse. Well, if we had a rise vision board, all of that stuff could be put right in front of us and we could be learning about the meetings and the and the calendar and all of that wonderful stuff could be right there. What examples do you guys have of some, you know?

Interesting ways that you have seen school districts take advantage of Rise Vision.

Blake Freeman (13:09)

Yeah, so beyond the the the normal, which is again student recognition, making announcements, like school supply lists. ⁓ we do have schools using our interactive product as well to recognize Hall of Fame athletes, Hall of Fame students, ⁓ arts arts folks that have made an impact on the community. So basically what they'll do is they'll they'll put a an interactive Rise Vision license on an interactive screen, put that outside of their gymnasium or in their entryway.

And then the visitors that come come in, they can say, ⁓ I went to school here in nineteen eighty-seven and press the nineteen eighty-seven tab and scroll to their their area of the yearbook and see themselves, see their bio, see their name. so that's a really popular way to utilize RiseVision right now. I think I talked a little bit about the ⁓ live announcements. Live stream announcements are incredibly popular with Rise Vision. And what what schools are doing is they found this this tool.

⁓ to stream to YouTube Live, right? So so they're streaming every morning to YouTube Live, goes live there, it pipes down to Rise Vision. We interrupt the screens. Those YouTube Live presentations are are active in all the classrooms on all the screens throughout the building. They're getting the announcements ⁓ no matter what. And then one really great way that districts are utilizing us ⁓ is setting up playlists of district wide information.

Doesn't matter what district it is. They're going to have information from a district level that needs to be communicated to the staff and students at each school. So they can do that from a district level. They can push all that information down to those screens within the schools. and then the schools can complement that with their additional ⁓ content, whether it's Canva presentations, Google Slides, student recognition, YouTube videos, highlight reels, ⁓ the field day.

⁓ and events, galleries are great. there's a lot of those that go on at the end of the year. They they have hire professional photographers, upload all those photos to Rise Storage and then have a slideshow of the end of the year activities or graduation.

Jeffrey Bradbury (15:22)

I wanna ask you a question about the different levels of our school district, right? How can Rise Vision be supportive to teachers, principals, IT directors, and then finally the superintendent level? How can Rise Vision really get out there and support classroom instruction and make an impact on what's happening there?

Blake Freeman (15:27)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so let's start let's start with the teachers. ⁓ the teachers far and above anything else, they want something that works. If if something works 70% of the time, it might as well not work at all. ⁓ so if they're trying to screen share using a tool that is finicky, ⁓ they have to connect to some weird network that's being that's being ⁓ broadcast by a device and they can't stay connected to their own Wi-Fi network.

They're just not going to use it. They're going to plug in an HDMI cable and go on about their business, but they're going to be strapped down to that that device and that screen. With Rise Vision in the classroom, our screen sharing is very flawless. It's incredibly simple to use. It's incredibly secure. The teacher can allow the kids to connect and moderate those sessions so the kids can show what the teacher wants them to show.

and then in addition to that, the digital signage in the classrooms, we make it easy to communicate your messaging. Whether it's a fun event or you know, you wanna maybe you're a librarian and you want to have books of the week up. You can come in, edit those templates, have them up within about five minutes. ⁓ I think your next one was principals. So from the principal level, you can communicate your message to the whole school regardless ⁓ of if you have an active PA system or not. If you

don't want to get everybody into the gymnasium or multi-purpose room for ⁓ a a meeting or a assembly. you can do everything from your office and get it into the classrooms, the hallways, and you can do it really, really easily. ⁓ that's kind of the name of the game there. for IT directors, IT directors generally ⁓ don't want another project. And that's kind of the beauty of RiseVision. The deployment is incredibly easy.

There's not a whole lot involved with the deployment. And then once it's deployed, we onboard the champions, the principals, the teachers, the secretaries, the admins at the schools. So we're training them for you. The ultimate goal is if IT doesn't want to be involved in the day-to-day of digital signage, which most of them do not want to be involved, ⁓ we will take care of it for you. We have a North American based support team that responds in one business hour or less. Their current ⁓ their current

Time on that is 26 minutes for first response. ⁓ So we make it really, really easy for anybody that's working in in the system to get answers if they're stuck and not have to go to their IT team for a scheduling issue or a content issue.

Jeffrey Bradbury (18:23)

You know, Blake, I'm glad that you just mentioned that because one of the things that I know is big for any tech director or any any you know district leader is professional development. You know, budgets are tight. We're buying the software for other people to use. We're buying this software so that way other people can use it to promote all the major things. What does professional development look like? Especially at, you know, you're training office workers, you're training webmasters, you're training whomever.

How can we make sure that when we connect with Rise Vision, we can get our districts up and running quickly?

Blake Freeman (18:57)

That's a great question. So we have a team of customer success managers at RiseVision that handles all of the onboarding and it's all included in that licensing cost. So we will dedicate time to onboard different segments of your staff, whether it's ⁓ super technical IT people that need the nitty-gritty of how the system works and how to set up the hardware, or it's an end user like a teacher, a principal, a secretary, someone in the the nutrition staff.

We will customize the training to them ⁓ and get them the information that they need. Now, turnover ⁓ is is kind of high in schools. People go from s school to school sometimes and people need more training. ⁓ so we open that up if you need ⁓ repeat onboarding sessions. We do ⁓ offer that as well. And again, it's all included in the price of your licensing. We don't charge extra for any of that.

Jeffrey Bradbury (19:50)

Blake, if anybody's interested in learning more about Rise Vision, connecting with your team, where do they go to find out more information?

Blake Freeman (19:56)

Yeah, just go to risevision dot com. You can go to the pricing page and submit your request for a demo or a quote. you might get lucky and might get me ⁓ doing your demo.

Jeffrey Bradbury (20:07)

Now, Blake, as we mentioned at the top of this podcast, this is the first video that we're lucky to be doing this year with Rise Vision. We're gonna be talking not only how to put it together, how to get it in, but we also have an episode dedicated to that IT director. And we're gonna be checking out how he's using it in his school district to really make a change in his faculty and in his community. So make sure that you're checking that out. Hit that subscribe button, hit that like button.

And make sure that you guys are checking out all the episodes here for our Rise Vision. You can find out more information over at teachercast.net forward slash risevision. That's teachercast.net forward slash risevision. Blake, I want to say one more time. Thank you so much for coming on. And of course, we want to say thank you to RiseVision. Check out everything over at RiseVision.com. Blake, thank you so much for your time today.

Blake Freeman (20:56)

Yeah, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. And it was a pleasure meeting you.

Jeffrey Bradbury (21:00)

And it is so great having Blake on today. And that wraps up this episode of the Teacher Cast Educational Network. On behalf of Blake and everybody here at Teacher Cast, my name is Jeff Bradbury, reminding you guys to keep up the great work in your classrooms and continue sharing your passions with your students.