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Stanford U taking digital signage to school

Stanford University is using Christie MicroTiles as a learning tool at its campus in Stanford, California, according to an announcement from Christie.

October 3, 2014

Stanford University is using Christie MicroTiles as a learning tool at its campus in Stanford, California, according to an announcement from Christie. Using a frame designed by rp Visuals, a digital signage video wall of Christie MicroTiles measuring approximately 1,440 square feet (32-units wide by 6-units tall) has been installed two feet off the ground in a Wallenberg Hall classroom, spanning nearly the entire width of the room. The teaching space hosts journalism and social sciences, among other classes, as well as special events such as election night, the company said.

Accdording to the announcement, the Wallenberg Foundation decided it was time for a refresh of the building opened in 2002, including replacing the old projectors in the 60-seat theater with Christie MicroTiles. The school's Director of Technology Services, Office of the Registrar, Bob Smith, said in the announcement that the front row was often vacant because it provided a poor view and if the seats were filled, those audience members cast shadows on the screen.

Smith said the MicroTiles also allow people to sit closer to the screen and "allow us to flexibly adjust the visual rhetoric of the screen, making important things bigger, less critical things smaller, bringing things to the center, and moving other things to the side."

An early use of the MicroTiles was Nov. 6, 2012 when the space served as a working newsroom for journalism students covering the 2012 election with the MicroTiles displaying multiple feeds simultaneously.

"What you saw there was a sort of mission control application where there were seven different screens up there — including CNN — two local channels with picture-in-picture and closed captioning, the New York Times webpage, a Google analytics page, one person editing video and another sorting still images," Smith said. "It was the apotheosis of a group work scenario. There was information that was common to everyone in the room spread across the top of the screen. And, at the same time, people who needed some smaller group sharing the space or just a larger display area were working in very close to the screen but down low and using the MicroTiles as an extension of their laptop. That was a really fun, early use of the space."