Schools and universities are flocking to digital signage to fulfill a variety of communications tasks.

As the summer rapidly comes to a close, children, adolescents and young adults prepare to return to school to resume their education.

While that annual ritual continues much in same way it has my entire life, many other aspects of the school experience are different. For instance, why should a student learn the Dewey Decimal System when there's Google and the Internet? Remember that distinct smell and soggy feel of newly mimeographed tests? A relic of a bygone era. How about recesses filled with competitive games of soccer, kickball or basketball? Is it even OK to have winners and losers anymore?

Here's another you're sure to remember: The disembodied voice of the principal emanating from a small speaker on the wall filling the classroom with various announcements. That, pardon the pun, is old school. It's gone -or at least augmented by technologies like student-run TV production and digital signage.

While it's not surprising that digital signage is replacing outmoded methods of communications around schools, what some might find shocking is the scope of digital signage deployments on campuses. According to an article published in ecampusnews.com in July, some 1,500 campuses added digital signage last year, and an additional 2,200 campuses are forecasted to do the same in 2011.

Digital signs at elementary schools, high schools and on the campuses of colleges and universities are used for a variety of applications, including -but not limited to:

* Informational: Where bulletin boards, lockers and even telephone poles on campus were once covered with fliers recruiting students for activities, advertising a new band on tour or conveying some other piece of important news, digital signs are offering a more attractive way to get the message out more quickly and easily.

* Wayfinding: Frequently visitors to a college campus or even a massive high school don't know how to get where they want to go. Digital signs not only can greet visitors, but also make it easy to find a gymnasium, theater or even an auditorium where voting in a local or national election is being conducted.

* Menu boards: With digital signage, controlling the display of what's for lunch at the school cafeteria becomes consistent and less labor intensive, if deployed across an entire school district. Think of the manual steps that must be taken to use the old plastic lettering -repeated over and over again across the district. Then there is simplifying the steps to coordinate this huge dance.

* Create ambience: Some school districts and universities use digital signage to create a desired environment. For example, one Midwestern high school honors program focused on business education relies on a digital sign outside each classroom to showcase the work of students and to give them a place to make special presentations. The digital signs, thus, are both functional and instrumental in creating the desired look and feel the school district desires.

* Emergency alerts: Displays on a digital signage network makes informing faculty, staff and students of potential severe weather and other emergency situations quick and easy.

So, here's the scoop: These digital signage applications are transforming how many different communications tasks are being fulfilled in educational settings. Digital signs are replacing outmoded approaches while at the same time making it easier to communicate an effective message. It's no wonder thousands of campuses and school districts nationwide are turning to digital signage.

In early July, the Digital Place-based Advertising Association released results from a survey showing just how important digital-out-of-home media is becoming to professional media planners.

Digital placed-based media, long in its ascendency as a legitimate advertising medium, appear poised to enter an entirely new realm of acceptance among professional media planners, according to a survey released in early July from the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA).

According to the survey, 86.3 percent of media planning respondents said they intend to use digital place-based media as part of their media plans in 2012, a jump from 75.5 percent who said their 2011 media plans include digital place-based media and 65.3 percent from 2010.

To be sure, the percentages revealed by the survey show digital placed-based media has come into its own as a legitimate advertising vehicle. But what is even more stunning is that the survey found 44 percent of media planners plan to shift dollars once allocated to the granddaddy of electronic media, namely television, to fund their digital place-based media buys.

TV ranked second among existing media that media planners intended to tap for funding their digital place-based media plans. Topping the list was outdoor advertising from which 54 percent said they would shift funds. Digital/online ranked third with nearly 23 percent identifying it as the source of funds. Fewer than 20 percent said they would not shift dollars to fund their plans for digital place-based media.

According to a press release announcing the results of the survey, DPAA president Susan Danaher sees that 20 percent figure as particularly significant because it indicates media planners view digital place-based media as being included from the outset as part of their of media plans, not an afterthought to be funded by simply reallocating dollars.

I see these survey findings as the latest in a line of data points indicating that digital-out-of-home advertising is coming into its own as an advertising medium. Others include progress in audience measurement technologies and techniques and the collection of audience metrics by The Nielsen Company.

These DPAA findings confirm that digital-out-of-home advertising has long ago transitioned from a quirky concept that a handful of avant-garde media planners would experiment with to the mainstream of media alternatives.

The findings also raise in my mind a question about the 14 percent of media buyers who don’t plan to use digital place-based media. It would be easy to assume that they simply will be latecomers to the party when they ultimately recognize the value digital place-based media bring their clients.

But I suspect at least a portion of the holdouts may work on accounts for whom digital place-based media just doesn’t make sense, i.e. an online insurance company with no field agents, a credit monitoring service company or some other business with no physical presence in the proximity of its customers.

The survey was taken online May 6-June 6 by the association among about 1000 strategic media planners nationwide. One can only wonder if media buyers with clients who have no face-to-face customer interaction were removed from the sample what tiny percentage  would have no plans for digital place-based media next year.

A new report from IMS Research forecasts dramatic growth in digital signage over the next few years thanks to growing acceptance of the medium as a valuable ad delivery mechanism.

Whether your operation is a mom-and-pop store or a highfalutin retailer, take note. Digital signage is expected to see some remarkable growth over the next few years and much of that growth will come from retail.

A newly released report from IMS Research concludes that after a couple of sluggish years, the worldwide digital signage market will see growth in excess of 40 percent in 2013 to reach a total of $7 billion. And an important component of that market will be in the retail sector.

According to the research firm, which laid out its forecast in "The World Market for Digital Signage, 2011 Edition," an important reason for the growth is that digital signage is now entering the mainstream of media, which are regularly considered and evaluated by ad agencies and marketers for their advertising purchases.

"There is increasing recognition that it is a valuable tool for directly interacting with audiences, and providing a compelling additional dimension to augment overall advertising placements across media," a press release announcing the findings quotes Shane Walker, director of the Consumer Electronics Group at IMS Research, as saying.

With that growing recognition of the value of digital signage as an advertising medium, it's not too surprising that IMS Research found strong growth in the retail sector.

The new study shows that of all the vertical markets for digital signage, retail continues to be the largest, accounting for just under 25 percent of all digital signage hardware and software sales. By the end of 2015, IMS Research forecasts retail will remain the dominant sector of the digital signage market, reaching nearly $2 billion.

Long recognized as a fundamental strength of digital signage in retail, the ability to reach shoppers at the point of sale with a message aimed at influencing their final buying decision is likely to benefit from a trend that is in its infancy at home, but soon is likely to become commonplace: TV Everywhere.

Cable, Telco and satellite television providers have been promoting the concept of TV Everywhere for the past year or so. Perhaps you are familiar with the commercials. A TV viewer witnesses a raging battle between two robotic-looking creatures in his kitchen. As one appears to get the upper hand and slams his opponent through the wall, the viewer pauses the action with his remote control and walks into an adjacent room, where he hits the play button and the fight resumes.

Commercials like these are building awareness among television viewers that they are no longer chained to one TV set to watch a show. Rather they now for the ability to not only resume programming they are watching from set to set as they walk through their homes, but also access and resume a program on their laptop computers, smartphones or media tablets that they started to watch on their TVs.

Now extend this "TV Everywhere" concept to the realm of commercial messages and take that every-access notion to the retail store aisle with a digital signage end cap. Imagine how brand awareness campaigns in the home could morph into a product-specific offer at the point of purchase.

As Walker of IMS Research put it in the press release: "The tools are available today to create a consistent campaign that can reach an audience multiple times while in transit through billboards, street furniture, metro displays, video walls and in-store kiosks, all the while becoming more targeted through mobile device interaction. This experience will culminate in the customer reaching a touch-enabled screen at the point-of-sale where inventory can be checked and an order placed."