There’s a lot to be excited about when it comes to Apple’s education features. Apple School Manager, the new Classroom app, Managed Apple IDs and Shared iPad all mean better tools for educators, which in turn provides stronger academic experiences for students. In today’s session, Apple and Jamf tech experts provided technical guidance to help users utilize Jamf for seamless rollouts, along with taking advantage of new features designed especially for technology managers and IT admins.
The education panel included Jeremy Butcher, product marketing at Apple, who began the session by recapping the great strides Apple took this year in education including Apple School Manager, Shared iPad, Managed Apple IDs and the Classroom app.
“The whole idea around Classroom is to be the teacher’s assistant around technology. It’s designed to smooth out the rough edges around technology coming into the classroom,” explained Butcher regarding Apple’s commitment to teachers and its belief that education is the great equalizer for students.
The panel discussed how to migrate from the old deployment programs to Apple School Manager, without any interruptions thanks to how Apple handles the VPP and DEP tokens. They also discussed what most schools will do after their migration. Kyle Berris, systems engineer at Jamf, noted, “The first big thing you will do with Apple School Manger is import your users and classes. The nice thing about Jamf is that it has an import wizard to help you get data from your Jamf Pro Server into Apple School Manager.”
The panel then went on to discuss the finer details in iPad deployments, from how to setup and use Shared iPad to the importance of the new device-based app assignments. “You should use device-based VPP apps for your deployments. This feature was built form the ground up with education in mind,” Jeremy said, underscoring the importance of this new feature (supported by Jamf Pro).
Finally, the panel wrapped up by discussing how Apple isn’t new to education – they’ve been supporting education since the very beginning – but they now have a new foundation to build upon with Apple School Manager. Apple says they plan to continue to evolve the new education management portal by bringing it to more customers, continuing to make it easy to use, and add features that schools are requesting.
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