Countdown timer for lesson changeover

[denium]

Hi all,

 

One of our SLT has asked me to look into implementing a "system" so that when the bell goes for lesson change, large digital displays around school show a "countdown" for a minute or so to encourage students to get their lessons on time and not hang around on the corridors.

 

I'll be honest, I've got no idea how to accomplish this, any ideas/recommendations?

 

Thank you

[Brax]

What signage software do you use for your displays?

[denium]

What signage software do you use for your displays?

 

Intel sticks running Windows, usually just displaying PPTXs

[mavhc]

A handy side effect of Web Office is you can display ppt via html, so do everything as a web page, have some javascript that knows the lesson times etc

[Garacesh]

One of our SLT has asked me to look into implementing a "system" so that when the bell goes for lesson change, large digital displays around school show a "countdown" for a minute or so to encourage students to get their lessons on time and not hang around on the corridors.

 

lmao, you and I both know they'll just hang around until zero to see what happens. Kids that don't want to go to lessons (or don't place much importance of being on time) won't go to lessons/be on time, a countdown isn't going to help.

The solution is a squishy one, they need to properly sanction lateness

 

Might be worth looking into something like Xibo for your signage though. Or Chrome Sign Builder if you're a G Suite school. That'll let you do signage on a schedule, set it and forget it.

 

(I suppose you could always have scheduled tasks but that's a lot of overhead for when things inevitably change)

[denium]

lmao, you and I both know they'll just hang around until zero to see what happens. Kids that don't want to go to lessons (or don't place much importance of being on time) won't go to lessons/be on time, a countdown isn't going to help.

The solution is a squishy one, they need to properly sanction lateness

 

Might be worth looking into something like Xibo for your signage though. Or Chrome Sign Builder if you're a G Suite school. That'll let you do signage on a schedule, set it and forget it.

 

(I suppose you could always have scheduled tasks but that's a lot of overhead for when things inevitably change)

 

Yep, it's a complete waste of time and effort, but if that's what the boss wants...

 

Yeah i was considering setting up Xibo, but i've not bothered because it'll be me who has to create & do everything. It's a nightmare to get any display content from staff. It's a time saver to just get the staff member to create a PPT with the content they want to display, and i just remote in and load it.

[Brax]

Yep, it's a complete waste of time and effort, but if that's what the boss wants...

 

Yeah i was considering setting up Xibo, but i've not bothered because it'll be me who has to create & do everything. It's a nightmare to get any display content from staff. It's a time saver to just get the staff member to create a PPT with the content they want to display, and i just remote in and load it.

I was going to suggest Xibo. They appear to have recently added a "Countdown" widget too which you could schedule to play at certain times. But the countdown widget looks like it should do what you're looking for. Will be a headache and a time sink but it'll future proof your signage and you can just load the powerpoints into Xibo and schedule them to play on whatever screen you wish, similar to how you're remoting on with the PC's and loading powerpoints. https://xibosignage.com/manual/en/media_module_countdown Edited June 28, 2023 by Brax

[mitchell1981]

This is our one. Not a countdown as such. Just pops up five minutes before the session, and shows a big clock with a moving second hand. Background changes to red when they are late, and it shows for another two minutes.

 

 

We use Risevision, which is a web based display software. Easy to use, but I did have to basically construct this myself. It's a static jpeg, that is overlaid by a webpage/javascript clock which runs from our Intranet sever. The clock just shows the current time. I can share the code for the clock if anyone is interested, but it's not my own code. I found it online a year or so ago so I won't take credit.

Edited June 28, 2023 by mitchell1981

[denium]

This is our one. Not a countdown as such. Just pops up five minutes before the session, and shows a big clock with a moving second hand. Background changes to red when they are late, and it shows for another two minutes.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]69342[/ATTACH]

 

We use Risevision, which is a web based display software. Easy to use, but I did have to basically construct this myself. It's a static jpeg, that is overlaid by a webpage/javascript clock which runs from our Intranet sever. The clock just shows the current time. I can share the code for the clock if anyone is interested, but it's not my own code. I found it online a year or so ago so I won't take credit.

 

Brill cheers mate, would you mind sharing the code with me?

[mitchell1981]

Sent via PM.

[STK91]

We use this: https://freealarmapp.com/

[msi_school]

Yep, it's a complete waste of time and effort, but if that's what the boss wants...

 

Yeah i was considering setting up Xibo, but i've not bothered because it'll be me who has to create & do everything. It's a nightmare to get any display content from staff. It's a time saver to just get the staff member to create a PPT with the content they want to display, and i just remote in and load it.

 

In Xibo you can set up PowerPoint integration but I am not sure this works on all platforms so i just export the PPTX to a Video then show that.