If you haven’t noticed, the cafeteria recently swapped out its ancient box-televisions with stylish, flat-screen monitors. So far this year, the monitors have displayed their wide range of capabilities–they’ve shown lunch menus, sports photos, and even videos.

Although the monitors this year have done more than the old dinosaur televisions ever did, I feel like there’s still room for improvement. For example, Mr. Rogers told me about how McAuley uses their monitors to display information about their students. Here are some examples of something similar that could display:

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Alexander Michael Wertz

Examples of what could be featured on the monitors.

Putting those slides together was simple, and to make things easier, we could have each student format their own slides about themselves and send them into a drop box or email address. While the examples all include seniors, we could change things up and add slides about underclassmen. We wouldn’t have to ask about colleges or plans after high school. Those students could add facts about themselves or some of their favorite Elder experiences.

Besides slides about students, we could also add more slides about weekly news at Elder. For example, Mr. Ruffing was recently named Elder’s newest principal for the 2016-2017 school year. We could display slides about his history here at Elder and all that he is involved with. The monitors previously displayed weekly events during Catholic Schools Week, but I’d love to build off of that. Beyond Elder news, we could even show slides about world news. Notable events are happening each and every day, and as current News Editor here at The Quill, I would be more than willing to put together interesting slides about what’s going on in our country and the world.

Here’s an example of what an Elder News slide could look like:

I like that we’ve been showing sports pictures, but if you’re anything like me you’re probably getting tired of seeing a continuous display of the same hockey pictures. To make them more interesting, we could maybe add quotes from players featured in the images, or even some of the previously displayed slides about the players to follow some of the images.

By testing the bounds of the monitors’ capabilities, Elder High School could do things other high schools could only dream of being able to do. Rather than going to school just to learn in the classroom, maybe you’ll be able to learn something about your fellow classmates or a news story outside of the classroom. By displaying more content on its monitors, Elder wouldn’t just be advertising itself to its students, but also to prospective students. For example, what if during the upcoming open house we displayed media slides about Elder: videos about the Elder Experience and slides advertising some of Elder’s most impressive students. I feel as if that would greatly impact a prospective student’s impression of Elder High School.

When asked whether or not Elder should do more with the monitors, Senior Elliot Wegman replied, “Yes, I think we should advertise more news and events through the monitors.” Another senior in favor of better utilizing the monitors is Kobe Young.

Young said, “I think we need to stop re-running the same old sports photos. When shadows come to Elder, we need to be advertising Elder to them by putting up slides that show what Elder is all about.” Kobe also added that when we’re at lunch, we should be able to vote at the beginning of every week what should be displayed on the monitors in the cafeteria (ESPN, March Madness, Elder sports highlights, etc.).