Bradley has worked at K-12 independent schools for much of the last 20 years, serving as the head of the information technology department and leading classroom technology integration. He’s well-versed in enterprise Wi-Fi, macOS and iOS system management, school technology, and SaaS tools.
Apple continues to offer weekly deals for iOS-based shopping when using Apple Pay as your payment method. Apple just emailed out their new weekly promo, and you can get free delivery on your first purchase from Postmates.
Due is one of those apps that I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t available. If you are a fan of it, you’ll be excited to know that version 3 is now available. If you’ve never used Due, you’ll want to keep reading because it has a sweet spot in my workflow.
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Making The Grade is a weekly series from Bradley Chambers covering Apple in education. Bradley has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing 100s of Macs and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple’s products work at scale, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for students.
When the iPad was released was back in 2010, many people in the education industry saw it as a way to end the large backpacks that children have to carry back and forth to school. To sum it up, that mainly hasn’t happened. In 2018, there still aren’t great solutions for the majority of schools to deploy ebooks in mass to any device. This problem spans across the Apple Bookstore, Kindle store, and the Google Play store.
JAMF is the maker of the Apple-focused mobile device management platform. They have two products: JAMF Now and JAMF Pro. I am actually a JAMF Pro customer, but JAMF Now is a really great platform as well. JAMF Now is aimed at businesses without an IT department, while JAMF Pro has a number of bells and whistles that IT departments often require.
If you love running macOS, but find yourself needing to virtualize other operating systems (Windows, Linux, or even multiple copies of macOS), you’ll want to take note of this article. Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac was released a few hours ago. Since version 1 in 2006, Parallels Desktop has been a staple on many Mac users’ computers. Year after year, it’s been back with upgrades to enhance the experience for those that need to live in a dual OS world. So what’s new in version 14? Well, a lot actually…
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I recently took a look at the various weather apps for iPhone (read the roundup here). Dark Sky was one of my absolute favorite apps, and today it gets even better. Despite already having the gold standard (in my opinion) of weather data, it now brings one of the best-looking apps to the table as well.
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If there is one thing I am obsessed with when it comes to technology, it’s my pictures. I keep them extremely organized and culled. I am equally as fanatical about getting them backed up. When it comes to music, movies, and TV shows – I can rebuy anything I lose due to hard drive failure. When it comes to pictures of my family, no amount of money can recreate them if I lose them. Over the years, my strategy has evolved as services have changed. I’ll do my best to keep this article up to date as things change in the future.
Making The Grade is a weekly series from Bradley Chambers covering Apple in education. Bradley has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing 100s of Macs and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple’s products work at scale, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for students.
The discussion around macOS and iOS has been going on since the iPad was first released. People have asked: what’s the long-term future of these product lines? Do we expect Apple to maintain iPhone, Mac, and iPad forever? I’ve long considered my ideal computing future to be something a little radical.
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Since the iPhone came out, I’ve long since thought this should be the future of computing. This style of device would eliminate the discussion around tablets vs. laptops. Why can’t a device be both?
Making The Grade is a weekly series from Bradley Chambers covering Apple in education. Bradley has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing 100s of Macs and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple’s products work at scale, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for students.
Much has been said about the transition from USB-A to USB-C. It certainly hasn’t been without its challenges in the short term. It’s been confusing for users (and expensive), but as someone who manages a fleet of Macs, I am excited. Yes, even if in the short term it has been expensive and confusing. In the long term, I am thrilled to be standardizing on one cable to rule them all. As tough as USB-C has been so far, IT departments have been dealing with “dongles” for years.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Apple had been awarded a statewide contract in North Carolina. I spoke with Drew Elliot, Communications Director, for N.C. Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) as I wanted to learn more about why iPad, and more about how this deployment would work. Being in IT, I am always curious about the nuts and bolts of how these large deployments work.
Apple continues to offer weekly deals for iOS-based shopping when using Apple Pay as your payment method. Apple just emailed out their new weekly promo, and you can get $20 discount code in the Nike app when you spend $100.
While there is a lot of great options for iOS mail clients, the built-in client is no slouch. Even after extended periods using third-party clients, I tend to always end up using the official app from Apple.
While it’s probably in need of an overhaul design-wise, it still holds up day to day use cases for me. I get a lot of email during the day, and I still feel like I can power through email on the iOS app just as well as I can anything else.
There are some features that I hope it gets in iOS 13 that would take it to the next level. Here they are:
Making The Grade is a weekly series from Bradley Chambers covering Apple in education. Bradley has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing 100s of Macs and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple’s products work at scale, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for students.
When rolling out school-wide software applications, it’s very rare to get universal praise for something. Sometimes people don’t think it’s needed, they have trouble setting it up, or maybe just don’t want another system to deal with for their child. A year ago, we launched a new system that was praised by every single parent that talked to about it. It was called Kinderlime.
Knowing up to date weather information is one of the reasons to own a smartphone. From knowing if your pool time is going to be cut short to deciding if you should wear shorts or pants, the weather dominates our life. Before smartphones, we had to rely on local news stations to gather the information. While that is not inherently bad, it’s not as convenient.
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Making The Grade is a weekly series from Bradley Chambers covering Apple in education. Bradley has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing 100s of Macs and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple’s products work at scale, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for students.
I am in full back to school mode in my school. One of my big tasks every summer is to get our 200+ iPads ready to go back into the classroom. This process includes cleaning them, installing recent iOS updates, replacing broken cases, and more. Once I get them ready, we start handing them back out to teachers to get into the hands of students.
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I woke up today with an email that one of my favorite apps is going away. Record Bird was a tool that would let you know when your favorite artists had new music coming out. It’s being shut down tomorrow.
Making The Grade is a weekly series from Bradley Chambers covering Apple in education. Bradley has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing 100s of Macs and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple’s products work at scale, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for students.
Being in school IT, I get a lot of sales calls. It especially heats up in the spring when schools are making all the buying decisions for the following year. Most of them are sent straight to my voicemail, so it’s hard to wade through the junk from the great. A few weeks ago, I got an email from the folks at Bretford wanting to talk to me about Juice Mobile Power. I was immediately intrigued when I saw the first paragraph on the website:
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June 28th, 2005 might go down as one of the biggest days in the history of media. It was the day Apple announced they were taking podcasting mainstream by including support for Podcasts in iTunes 4.9 and with syncing to the iPod. As rumors continue to swirl of iTunes being dismantled on macOS (in favor of dedicated apps), I thought it might be fun to take a look back at this important decision.
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While the Apple Watch Workout app is a really great app, you might be hesitant to use it to track your workouts if you have a long history with another ecosystem. I’ve been using Runkeeper since 2010, so I don’t want to lose all my stats and past runs.
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Making The Grade is a weekly series from Bradley Chambers covering Apple in education. Bradley has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing 100s of Macs and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple’s products work at scale, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for students.
Here at 9to5Mac, we’ve written a lot about HomeKit. It’s one of Apple’s technologies that I am most excited about going forward. I think we are just scratching the surface of what this platform will enable us to do in the home. There’s a part of me that would love to see Apple build their own home products (thermostats, switches, etc.), but they didn’t choose that route. HomeKit is a foundation for building products from any company.
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Apple continues to offer weekly deals for iOS-based shopping when using Apple Pay as your payment method. Apple just emailed out their new weekly promo, and you can get $10 off in the StubHub app when your purchase is $100 or more.
I’ve owned every Apple TV since the original one. I’ve also been a “cord cutter” for many years. I’m the ideal Apple TV owner in a lot of ways. I subscribe to all of Apple’s services (iCloud Storage, Apple Music, etc). I’m all in on HomeKit as well. We actually own five Apple TVs (1 of the 4K models, and 4 of the previous generation ones). I’d say that I’m as big of an Apple TV fan as there is.
I find myself (especially with writing on the web) needing to convert text to match style cases frequently. I often need to change title case to just capitalized or vice versa. Without a little automation, it can be tedious.
Making The Grade is a weekly series from Bradley Chambers covering Apple in education. Bradley has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing 100s of Macs and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple’s products work at scale, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for students.
When I was at the annual ISTE conference in Chicago a few weeks ago, I saw a few booths built around selling Alexa skills for your school. It got me thinking about what Siri in the classroom might look like (specifically with HomePod). Having pondering it for a bit, I came up with a handful of scenarios.