A strong commitment to service, to equality of relationships, and to fostering independent and creative thinking — these are some of the values of The Friends’ School, an independent, co-educational day and boarding school situated in the heart of Hobart, Tasmania. With over 1300 students ranging from early learners to primary and secondary school students, the school prides itself on its academic excellence and commitment to assist children find their individual purpose and passion.
Realising a technology vision in education
Enhancing learning with technology is a priority for The Friends’ School. While examining case studies from other education institutions, they select Apple as the hardware provider of choice, each time. A range of devices are used by students and staff: students from preschool to Year 6 are provided with individual iPads, while students from Years 7-12 are issued with MacBooks. In addition, around 300 staff also work on MacBooks and iMacs.
Our school purpose is having students make decisions for themselves and be in control of their own learning.
Empowering IT with Jamf Pro
With their Apple fleet growing, efficient deployment became an important goal for the school’s Information Services team. When faced with the challenge of adding more devices, it became clear they needed a solution capable of provisioning iPads and Macs at scale. Jamf Pro came to the rescue, enabling automation of deployment processes that were performed manually. Now the team can get a few hundred new devices ready each year.
After seeing the time saved in deployment and the ability to manage applications on iOS, the school expanded the use of Jamf Pro to manage MacBooks. To keep devices safe and consistent, Macs were re-imaged each year. By using Jamf Pro, the team is now able to update OS versions and applications regularly, reducing the need to re-image to one-third of the fleet.
Currently, Jamf helps admins at The Friends’ School streamline workflows and operate efficiently in several areas:
- Configuration profiles and policies make sure each device gets the required software, settings, and required changes and additions.
- Smart Groups and Advanced Searches provide information about the fleet.
- Apps are quickly deployed to groups and individuals to enable learning.
The team is also using Installomator, a Jamf Marketplace tool that integrates with Jamf Pro to automatically install or update software. It has been particularly useful in managing a mix of Apple Silicon and Intel MacBooks, choosing the appropriate package for installation in each case, and for applications that are not in the Jamf App Catalog.
Whether it’s providing an application to the Access and Inclusion team for a student with different learning needs or quickly deploying a new robotics/coding app that a teacher wants to try with a whole class, the App Store and Jamf Catalog do much of the heavy lifting.
We want them to be confident to use connected devices but to know that they're safe as well.
Moving to the cloud with Jamf
To remotely manage users, applications and resources, and reduce on-premises server maintenance, The Friends’ School took advantage of their annual renewal to move to Jamf Cloud and implement Jamf Connect. Jamf Connect allows for simple provisioning of users from Google Identity, their cloud identity service of choice. This enables admins to remotely monitor access and permissions, service machines and maintain security and compliance standards across all devices and users. It also makes it easier to provide a working device quickly, ensuring that no student or staff goes without.
The Jamf support team were excellent, both in the implementation sessions and with follow up support. Jamf Pro on Jamf Cloud has been highly reliable and we no longer need to manage updates of the solution in house.
Transforming learning and teaching
It’s not only IT teams that are empowered by Jamf and Apple. Teachers and students also noticed how their workflows became easier and more efficient with Apple devices. Educators at The Friends’ School describe app provisioning as seamless and effortless, creating further opportunities for teaching.
Jason McDonald, Director of Boarding and Mathematics Teacher, explains: “We've got current, new age classrooms which enables me to hook up my iPad and use that as a white board. I also use the Explain Everything application to make videos, and whether the students are sick or they're away, they can tap into that in evening because I’ve made a video of our lesson for today.”
Student of Year 8, Ella Clark points out the practical aspects of having an individual Apple device to support her learning: “It allows us to access a lot of devices and textbooks in one place, and it has many apps we can use to organize our homework, keep on top of tests and just have everything in one place.”
Watch the video to hear from educators, staff and students how Jamf and Apple helped transform learning at The Friend’s School: