After Logan City School District started slowly rolling out Vivi to its 6063 students and 263 teachers, Melisa Richardson, IT Director, and Jeff Alley, Instructional Technology Coach described the process as “some teachers were skeptical”..
“Our teachers liked their smart boards,” Alley said. “We knew there was going to be some resistance there so it was important to us that we weren’t tied to one product because we wanted to meet every teacher’s needs. That was part of Vivi’s appeal: it works with everything.”
“We’re still transitioning towards a state of 1:1, as in having Vivi in every classroom,” Richardson said .”But we’ve defined the direction we want to go and informed our teachers and principals of that. Our prior IT Director found Vivi 3-4 years ago, probably in an online tech forum, after we’d started off with another product that didn’t work out. We started out with Vivi in one elementary school and one high school, then began adding them to more schools.”
“Vivi is a more modern form of teaching,” Alley said. “Our teachers like being able to move around and it’s becoming more entrenched in our classrooms.”
In one year five class, they used to have a brown paper bag activity where students bring three things in to talk about them. Now they can make those experiences more interactive.
“Now our teachers are on board, although if we’re having WiFi issues and Chromebooks disconnect, then the network gets blamed. But if a Vivi box isn’t working because of our network, Vivi gets the blame. But that’s just what happens when something is new.”
One way Logan City School District has maximized its use of Vivi in and out of their classrooms is through digital signage.
“We’re really seeing a lot of engagement with the signage. We use it for motivational quotes around the campuses, classroom rules, we even make up questions and put them on Google Slides that automatically scroll through and call it “lunchroom conversations” so students have conversation starters in communal areas.
“We use Live Broadcast for a two-minute morning announcement, we have a digital citizenship, and now we’re providing our teachers with templates to create their own signage. We’ve made it clear to principals that this is the direction we’re moving.”
Melisa has been impressed with Vivi as a product, but she clarifies that is only half of the reason Logan City School District continues to expand its use of Vivi.
“We chose Vivi because of its customer service. To us, that was over 50% of the value in going with this product. The team is so responsive, they’re constantly making the product better, and the US team is just great.”
