Making The Grade

When my school came back from fall break, I had a teacher report that one of her classroom iPads had gone missing. I get messages like this quite often, but they are almost always in the building. I can verify this by logging into my Jamf Pro dashboard, and see which IP address it last “checked in” from. Our school has a static IP address, so the iPads will also show that as the last known IP address. I can also have Jamf Pro send me an email if one checks in off campus, I had actually turned this off as we had a student who was at St. Jude off and on last year, so I disabled the alerts while she was there, and I forgot to turn them back on. I had originally set this feature up to help prevent school iPad theft.
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Every technology deployment has its time in the sun. From the initial unboxing to the initial deployment, and to the various great moments, all deployments reach a point when it’s time to replace them. Over the years, I’ve done many Apple hardware refreshes, and they are a lot of fun. And one question that always has to be answered is what do you do with your existing hardware? Do you sell it? Do you keep using it? Let’s answer the question of what do you do with old laptops and iPads?

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I’ll make a statement that might be unpopular: Apple shouldn’t promote their privacy stance to schools when they aren’t offering a compelling service that schools can sign up for that replaces G-Suite. They’ve built solutions for schools that are siloed off from most of the student information systems without making an identity management system. They’ve created solutions (like Classkit, Apple Business Manager, and Apple School Manager) that don’t 100% replace anything else a school or business has. They’ve simply added more overhead to deploying iPad. Apple proclaiming their stance on privacy while also accepting a 9 billion payment from Google just makes them look hypocritical. If Apple is really concerned about privacy, they need to be building tools to replace what Google offers enterprise and education customers. Let me explain how.

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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 it comes to enterprise device management, every platform company (Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.) has their own style of management. Google (with Chromebooks) has built a complete end to end solution for managing its devices. When I say end-to-end, I mean that when you buy Chromebooks, you also buy the management tool sold by Google.
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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.

Apple Watch Series 4 was announced at Apple’s annual iPhone event, and it looks like a promising upgrade for Series 3 owners (and especially Series 0,1, and 2 owners). With the ability to detect AFIB with 98% accuracy, reduced bezels, and additional complications, Series 4 Apple Watch looks to be a hit.

As I do every week on my Making The Grade column, I like to look at things from the perspective of a teacher or student. This week, I want to consider the benefits of an Apple Watch for a teacher. I think this industry is perfect for Apple Watch, and I want to explain why.

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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.

iOS 12 and macOS Mojave have both been in the news this week. At the iPhone announcement event, Apple announced that iOS 12 would be coming on Monday, and macOS Mojave to launch on the 24th. For IT administrators, when Apple’s software update season hits full swing there can be a sense of dread. Right now, we are running the most stable versions of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra. We’ve had an almost a full year of bug fixes, so things are running as smooth as they will. As we enter a new season of X.0 updates, we often hit the rest button on stability. While iOS 12 has been very stable in the beta periods, it’s still a new OS. Third-party app providers will also need to update for stability as well. The question I want to help answer today is: When should you update managed iPad, iPhones, and macOS devices?

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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.

If you are around the K–12 technology scene at all, there is no doubt one term that you’ve heard of: BYOD. It stands for bring your own device. It means that the school’s technology program allows students to bring a device to school, put it on the school’s Wi-Fi network, and use it to do their classwork. On the surface, this sounds like a win-win for everyone. School’s get out of the device ownership and management business, and students get to bring whatever device they want to school. I’ve long disagreed with this strategy, and I want to explain why.

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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’ve written a lot about Apple TV over the years. I own five of them, and I use them every day. On the flip side, I can admit that is overpriced for what it does. I wrote this previously:

The problem, I believe, is that it’s become similar to HomePod: a device that’s perfect for people who are all in on Apple. Some people will argue that all of Apple’s products are better when used alongside others. While that’s true, I’d also say that Apple’s best products are also best in class on their own (iPhone, iPad, Mac). I think the Apple TV is great, but it still has some major flaws

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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.

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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.

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.

https://twitter.com/bradleychambers/status/1025095118003621890

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?

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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.

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.

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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 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.

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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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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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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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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.

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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.

Earlier this week, I attended the ISTE 2018 conference in Chicago. If you’ve never visited Chicago, I highly recommend it. This visit was my second this year, and it’s becoming one of my favorite cities.

In years past, ISTE was all about the iPad. It was about iPad accessories, iPad accessories, and iPad accessories. That has certainly changed with the growth of Chromebooks, but Apple still remains a dominant force in K–12 markets.
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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’ve written before about how Apple’s lack of an identity management solution has hurt Apple in the fight for classroom dominance against Google’s Chromebook. This week, I want to run through a little Apple history and explain one of the biggest mistakes Apple made in K–12 education — and it happened way before anyone outside of Apple was thinking about the iPad.
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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.

A question I often get about iPad deployments is whether or not to purchase keyboards. It’s a difficult thing to pick because it’s really going to depend on how you plan on using the iPads in the classroom. Are you doing tasks where the keyboard would make it easier? Then use a keyboard. If not, don’t use a keyboard. With iPad, the default should be touchscreen keyboard unless a student is doing work where the physical keyboard would make it easier.

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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.

WWDC was actually light on specific updates for the K–12 environment. One thing that caught my eye was ARKit 2.0, including Apple’s announcement of a new file format called USDZ:
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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.

In the education industry, most people are very transparent about sharing advice. Even in the private school industry, you likely aren’t “competing” for the same kids, so we’ve ended up with a very open group of people that are willing to share best practices, tips, and tricks. One of the most common questions I get is about app selection for iPad deployments. I’ve been researching apps for a long time, so for me, it’s less about what apps are the best and more about what criteria do I use when examining them. Here some of the things I look for (in no particular order).

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