The mission of Greenville City Schools is “to provide a safe and high quality learning environment that enables the district to provide engaging and rewarding work for students and staff every day; and to strive to continuously improve, looking ahead to the future to ensure that we prepare citizens who are college, career and life ready.”
Even with a focus on the future, legacy and excellence are both important to schools since a proven track record of achievements indicates top-tier programs and instruction. Ohio’s Greenville City Schools, in the Darke County seat of Greenville, wanted to modernize the way students, parents, alumni and other visitors could learn about and connect with the district’s history when on campus.
They asked the Visix creative services team to create an interactive digital signage directory to spotlight students achievements of the past with four areas of focus: past classes, athletic awards, valedictorians and salutatorians, and academic honors. The finished touchscreen design is a combination directory listing and photo repository that highlights excellence reaching all the way back to 1980.
Visix created a user-friendly interface tailored to the school district’s brand standards and colors, with their signature Green Wave mascot and a photo of Greenville High School on the home page. Interactive buttons on each of their displays make it easy for people to choose the topic they’re interested in an navigate directly to it. The buttons are placed along the bottom of screens for ADA compliance, and all four of the directories are searchable by scrolling through listings or entering a last name in the onscreen keypad.
By selecting Class Composites, people can see an alphabetical directory of past students along with their graduation year. Once a student is located in the directory, a quick-click icon launches a pop-up with their class photo. Users can zoom in on the photo to find the specific student or students they want to see.
When it comes to athletics, the Greenville Green Wave is an important part of local legacy. (Greenville High School is actually on Greenwave Way, a road that received that name during the famous “Tidal Wave” in the late 1960s.) The Athletic Awards directory works much like the Class Composites. There’s an alphabetical list of student names, which award they received (hall of fame, regional qualifier or district qualifier), which sport they played, and the year or years of the award.
Ed Olwine, former pitcher for the Atlanta Braves can be seen in the directory. Another famous Green Wave athlete is Jack Baldschun, pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds and San Diego Padres. And Matt Light was part of Green Wave football before an 11-year career with the New England Patriots, where he played offensive tackle during three Super Bowl wins.
But sports is not the only thing Greenville and Darke County excels in. Jeffrey Feltman, former head of the United Nations Department of Political Affairs is from Greenville, and writer and broadcaster Lowell Thomas was born in nearby Woodington. Who knows what future former students will accomplish?
To recognize academic excellence, Valedictorians and Salutatorians are listed by name, award and graduation year. And students that got on the National Honor Society Rolls get their own alphabetical directory listing under Academic Honors. The database is being updated all the time and will be a permanent record of honors received by alumni during their time with Greenville City Schools.
Darke county has had a long connection to its past and was the birthplace of that famous wild west sharpshooter Annie Oakley, while Paul Norris, who co-created the superhero Aquaman for DC comics, was born in Greenville. The school district wants their digital signage to remind their community that Greenville is still full of heroes. This interactive project from Visix helps do just that.