Foyer info screens

[localzuk]

We now have a screen in our school foyer which shows a powerpoint presentation with the days events on. To update this someone remote desktop's into the computer (running vista), edits the powerpoint file and saves it as a self running presentation in office 2007 - into the startup folder for the user that is auto-logged in. They then go to start and type shutdown -r -t 00 which restarts the machine, auto-logs the user in and runs the presentation.

This is a cumbersome and complex method of updating something. How do other schools do it? I have been considering creating a Flash project which gets its info from a website and updates the screen accordingly. Using Action Script, it could be told to reconfigure the display almost entirely dynamically, including colours, position of text, what to show in which area of the screen, etc... with very little messing around (obviously the basic stuff like adding a new event would be just a case of entering info into a web page and the other stuff would be for me to do).

[maniac]

There's a thread covering this sort of thing here http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?nam...ewtopic&t=4049

Mike

[mark]

There's also another thread where I post details of some free software that allows you to update a powerpoint presentation live - the presentation keeps on rolling seamlessly without the need to re-start the software or the PC.

[tech-man]

We use a product called D|Sign from http://www.dsign.co.uk/ this is a great product.

[localzuk]

Indeed. I have now taken a nose at it but have been informed that powerpoint is not doing all we want and we don't want to spend any money so I am going to build a Flash project... Shouldn't take too long.

All it will be is a PHP site with some simple forms (accept the basic HTML that Flash/Actionscript accepts), a mysql database as the backend and flash as the front end. It will also allow me to have movies showing in whatever zone I want and live RSS feeds. All are simple to do.

When I have it done I may package it up with some instructions and post it somewhere.

[mark]

Nice one - would appreciate it lxuk