The Message board project was an idea that I had while designing an Intranet in one of the first schools that I worked at. It was a way to get a message out to the pupils, which was suprisingly difficult to do in traditional ways. All pupils had the same front page when they opened up an internet browser, so I thought that the best place to get a message out to them was to display it on the fist page that they saw when using a school computer. I wrote the original message board in VB.NET and used a datagrid to display the message. The message board was displayed using an IFrame with a javascript scroll feature so that if there were more messages than would fit in the iframe, the frame would scroll and show all the messages that were active. I created a web form that staff could set a time limit for the message so that obsolete messages would become inactive.
The message board became very popular and was used every day for general messages to the pupils.
A few years later, I re-visited the school that I used to work at and to my surprise as I was being walked though the building I looked up and saw a screen mounted on the wall and saw my message board enlarged on the big screen. Someone must have had the idea that my message board could be enlarged and used as a digital display board. This gave me an idea to do something similar at the school that I was currently working at.
I set about creating a new enhanced message board which would allow users to target different screens around the school and added additional features which included rich text and html formatting. I also allowed users to include pictures in their messages. Obviously to allow pictures I had to create a secret password so that only users with the passcode were able to add messages, believe me you need to do this or something embarrasing could potentially happen!
Today the message board system that I designed is being displayed in 2 different schools and on large digital displays in key areas of the schools. I am very proud of how successful my application has been and very proud to know it is being used in more than one school in my area.
I made that!
Last updated, August 2018