1st XI netball against Rhenish.
The cork board, without the cork
Know what's
on the board.Everything else comes down.
Post a notice once, and say who it's for. It turns up on every screen they walk past. When it's no longer relevant, it comes down on its own.
Athletics trials — sign up at the office.
Physical Science Paper 1.
Grade 10 Geography field trip.
Boerewors rolls today.
Buses running ten minutes late.
Cricket practice is cancelled.
Three of these expired last term. Take them down — someone has to.
Why now
You can't reach a phone that's in a locker.
More schools are putting phones away for the school day — and every channel a school has invested in goes away with them. An app, a WhatsApp group, a push notification: between the first bell and the last, none of them arrive. A screen in a corridor asks nothing of anybody.
Nothing to install, nothing to join
No app, no group, no login, no data. A notice on the wall is read by whoever walks past it, which is everybody, on their way to somewhere else.
Up before the next bell
A room changes at nine and the notice is on the wall a minute later. Nothing waits for Friday's newsletter, or for somebody to check their email.
No phone to unlock
Phone bans are really about social media. Reading a message on a phone means unlocking it — and everything else on it. A screen needs none of that.
Setting up
Three steps, in the order you'd actually do them.
Pair a screen
Open the player on any panel already on the wall. It shows a code. Type that code in once, and the panel keeps its own credential from then on — revoke it from your desk whenever you like.
Hang a board on it
A board is what notices go on. Say what it carries — any grade, or just the matrics, or only the fixtures — and every screen you hang it on shows the same thing.
Post a notice
Say who it's for, not where it should appear. It lands on every board that carries that audience, in the foyer and the sports wing at once, without anyone choosing screens.
Why it's different
Notices are addressed to people, not pushed to screens.
Every other system asks which screens should show your message. Ask that and you have to answer it again for every screen you ever add. Corkless asks who it's for, and the routing follows on its own.
Mr Pillay posts
"Trig revision due Monday."
grade:grade-12subject:maths
It appears on
The Matric board, in the sixth-form common room and outside the maths block.
Next term, a new screen goes up
Hang the Matric board on it. Every past and future notice is already there. Nothing is re-sent, re-tagged or re-scheduled.
Nothing outstays its welcome
Every notice has an end, decided by what kind of notice it is.
Not a reminder to take it down. A rule, set once, that the notice carries with it. This is what a sheet of paper could never do.
Fixtureuntil the match ends
Examuntil the paper ends
Homeworkuntil it's due
Tuck shop menuuntil 14:00
Announcementuntil 16:00
Short message10 minutes
Closure24 hours, once approved
Your words, not ours
It already speaks the way your school does.
Grades, sports, subjects. Nobody translates a school into generic tags and groups first, because there is nothing to translate — this is the vocabulary a notice is addressed in.
Grade
Grade 8Grade 9
Grade 10Grade 11
Grade 12
Sport
NetballRunning
HockeySwimming
Tennis
Subject
Physical ScienceLife Science
GeographyHistory
MathsEnglish
Afrikaans
Who it's for
LearnersParents
TeachersPrefects
Kinds of notice
AnnouncementFixture
ResultTime change
ExamHomework
PracticeTrip
Tuck shopClosure
The practical part
It runs on the screen already hanging in your corridor.
Any panel with a browser
Samsung Tizen, LG webOS, Android TV, or a Raspberry Pi behind an old monitor. No app store, no set-top box, nothing to buy.
Sign in with Microsoft
Your staff already have accounts. No new passwords, no separate user list to keep up to date when someone leaves.
Hosted in South Africa
Your learners' data stays in the country, on infrastructure in Johannesburg — not somewhere you'd have to explain at an audit.
Put one screen up and see.
Start with the foyer. Pair it in a minute, hang a board on it, and post something. If the corridor stops filling up with last term's paper, add the next one.