Technology that knows its place
You know you have a challenge on your hands when you’re responsible for Mac computers distributed across nine schools, in three towns, all using varying bandwidths, and becoming increasingly mobile. This challenging environment can be found in the Lakeland Catholic Schools district of Alberta, Canada. The weight of this challenge falls squarely on the shoulders of Glenn Nowosad, Lakeland’s Director of Technology.
When Glenn began to pursue a Mac desktop management solution to ease the burden, he was intent on finding a product that was compatible with Lakeland’s educational goals.
“Ultimately, I’m a teacher,” said Glenn. “I want education to dictate our approach to technology, not technology dictating our approach to education.”
Responding to teachers
Glenn had looked around at other products, but found that, “...nothing was a good fit. Everything seemed like overkill, underkill, or simply not affordable.”
VersionTracker pointed Glenn to Jamf Pro. After learning more, he found that Jamf Pro would not only get the job done, but also could do it in a way that supports education.
“Jamf Pro is letting us customize workstations to meet the needs of our individual teachers faster than we could before,” he said. “We’re even modifying docks—a task that was usually forced to the bottom of our to-do lists. Using Jamf Pro’s modify dock feature, we’re facilitating those requests.”
Glenn is also going to use Jamf Pro to help recruit his PC technicians for added Mac support.
“Terminal scripting is built into Jamf Pro, so we’ll be able to increase our maintenance efficiency by having our PC guys help on the Mac side,” said Glenn.
Serving education
Because the district relies so heavily on its Mac computers, improved support and maintenance equates to improved classroom environments for teachers and students. Glenn wanted technology to serve education—Jamf Pro is doing exactly that.
“Jamf Pro’s power to distribute scripts quickly, its built-in features, its documentation, and Jamf’s willingness to build a community around its hard-core users are huge for me.”