A Canadian school board, trying to deal with a string of large-scale funding cutbacks has started testing a new funding model: selling ad space on classroom computers. Companies like McDonalds, Pepsi, and Trident have signed on to a screensaver advertising program that mixes educational messages, motivational words, and slick corporate advertising.
The Peel Region Board of Education, in Ontario, is set to vote Monday on whether to continue this program, which has been in trial phase since 1 February. If approved the programming will be sent to 200 schools with a total of 10,000 computers.
While Ontario is the first district to use screensavers, advertising in public schools is a growing, if controversial, phenomenon. In the United States, efforts such as Channel One, an adverting-sponsored educational television program aired in schools, have gathered a rising tide of supporters and detractors.
"This typifies a trend of corporate involvement in the classroom," says Jo Hirschmann, program director of the California-based Center for Commercial-Free Public Education, which is wary of this from of commercialism. "Corporations are coming into the classroom under the guise of addressing school fiscal problems. The reality is that the money that schools raise from this type of advertisement is minimal." Hirschmann feels that this type of program encourages the government to abdicate its responsibility for funding public education.
But advertisers want the exposure. "It's not like we're rewriting history to include Pepsi," says Daryl Nicholson of Pepsi, who points out that all along the way to school, as well as in their free time, students inhabit a densely-saturated media landscape. Nicholson adds that, as a taxpayer with no children, he'd rather see the school board raise money through corporate sponsorship than his pocketbook.
The cost to advertisers will be 20 Canadian cents per screen per week, which George Ching, a teacher at one of the trial schools, says would yield schools C$400 a month. The trial was free to advertisers.
The screensaver program was developed by John Robinson, now president of ScreenAd Digital Billboards, who had an inspiration when getting billboard advertisements ready for production. Noticing how nice the ads looked on computer screens, Robinson decided he could help solve the funding crisis at the local Ontario schools. The trial he developed includes classes that his two children attend.
"The government is not there anymore to help schools out," Robinson says. "People are realizing that the corporate world has to come to the rescue, and they're not going to do it for nothing."
All advertisements must agree to include an educationally motivating message. The Pepsi ad, for instance, encouraged children to "develop a thirst for knowledge." Robinson argues that the screensaver is a palatable, appealing alternative to other forms of advertisement. Unlike a poster, he points out, it can be turned off.
Jack Slater, who teaches Robinson's kids and also helped develop implementation of the ScreenAd program, is interested in working with kids to design slides for the screensaver themselves. He and the students would like to make a tribute to one of their classmates who was recently killed in an auto accident. All student-designed screens would be approved by their administration as well as ScreenAd, Robinson says.
