Challenge
Due to the pandemic, lessons had to be made available digitally at very short notice, requiring a switch from a local Jamf Pro version to a cloud-based Jamf School version.
Our solution
We were able to set up the new Jamf School instance, carry out the switch, and identify many ways in which administrators can reduce manual effort.
The result
After just six weeks, homeschooling lessons were able to begin—and digital formats can also be integrated into the school concept in the future if necessary.
Challenges facing St. Thomas More School
Digital schools are the future
St. Thomas More School in Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA, recognized early on how important it is to digitize schools. In 2006, it launched an “Information Technology Pilot Program” and purchased many laptops, interactive whiteboards, and tablets for the school, integrating them into everyday school life. Today, its 500 students and 45 teachers are equipped with around 600 Apple devices, primarily iPads, which supplement the school’s device pool.
Students – from preschool to middle school – use the devices to create multimedia content, learn programming, and produce animations and videos, among other things. Even exploring 3D printing technologies and developing their own online game is part of the curriculum. This is because the school believes it is important for its students to be prepared for the challenges of the 21st century and to learn early on how to use digital devices and apply them meaningfully.
To manage the iPad devices, the Jamf Pro mobile device management (MDM) system, which specializes exclusively in Apple devices, was initially used and installed in the school’s own data center. Thanks to this solution, Tracy Sell, Director of Educational Technology, and her team were able to easily configure the devices and equip them with relevant data and applications. This allows teachers and students to use the devices effectively in the classroom.
Coronavirus necessitates swift action
But then the coronavirus crisis hit in 2020, making it necessary overnight to switch school operations completely to homeschooling if necessary. This was a huge challenge for everyone involved. Learning and teaching suddenly had to take place in a completely different environment and under completely different conditions. This not only required new learning concepts, but above all technologies that made fully digital teaching possible.
The problem at St. Thomas More School, which, unlike many other schools, was actually very well equipped technically, was that the locally installed on-premise version of Jamf Pro was not accessible from home. The instance was configured so that students and teachers could only access it when connected to the school network—in the area protected by a firewall. This was suitable for regular school operations and ensured a high level of security and convenient provision of all services and apps. However, homeschooling was not possible in this way.
As the school was very satisfied with the performance of the Jamf platform, it decided to switch from an on-premise to a cloud version and, at the same time, to switch from Jamf Pro to Jamf School – a solution that is even more focused on the needs of students, parents, and teachers. In addition to the features already available in Jamf Pro, Jamf School offers, for example, an additional service for parents that allows them to restrict access to installed applications, such as social media apps, on privately purchased devices. This ensures that children can focus on working with their devices at certain times of the day.
But how could Jamf School be configured despite a lack of access to the existing Jamf Pro instance, and how could the switch to Jamf School be made successfully? Without a lot of effort and within a few weeks? After all, St. Thomas More School could not and did not want to afford to do without digital applications in such a difficult year as 2020, with the coronavirus pandemic. Students should be able to continue their education right from the start of school after the summer holidays. Quick action was therefore needed to get a fully digital school system up and running..
Our solution for St. Thomas More School
Thanks to its in-depth expertise in the mobility environment and its high level of agility, EBF is able to address special challenges such as those faced by St. Thomas More School. The EBF team knows exactly what is important, can identify pitfalls in advance, and develop solutions for complex requirements in the shortest possible time. The experts draw on countless experiences, a broad network, their own products, and comprehensive consulting expertise.
EBF not only helped the school set up the new Jamf School instance and carry out the changeover. It also identified many ways in which administrators could reduce their manual workload, not only during the transition process, but also in the future. Within a few weeks, St. Thomas More School and EBF worked together to implement the new Jamf School mobile device management solution, enabling students and teachers alike to enjoy a fully digital learning experience.
To make the work of the administrators at St. Thomas More School easier, the new Jamf School instance should be set up as similarly as possible to the old Jamf Pro version. However, due to the lack of external access, it was only possible to view the system settings securely and then map them to the new Jamf School instance in a roundabout way. It was also not possible to reproduce every configuration 1:1. EBF therefore established some unusual solutions to enable comparable administration.
There is a lot of change at St. Thomas More School: at the beginning of each school year, new students join the school, others leave, and all students move up a grade. During the school year, transfers, relocations, and similar events also lead to a number of changes. For the school’s technology team, this means work: new devices must be distributed and old ones returned. Applications must be reassigned or updated.
Student and teacher accounts must be updated. Jamf’s MDM can be very useful here, provided that all functions are used. While St. Thomas More School had been very successful with this so far with its iPad devices, there was still untapped potential in the area of education that required further planning.
The experts at EBF therefore developed various suggestions for improvement – from new methods of account synchronization to data export. Only when the data from Apple School Manager is fully integrated with that of the Student Information System can the Jamf School platform optimize many of the previous manual processes.
Based on EBF’s concept and documentation, the necessary data was exported from the Student Information System and imported into Apple School Manager in the next step, thanks to successful collaboration between the school administrators and Apple. From now on, all accounts and classes can be managed this way, with automatic synchronization to the Jamf School instance, which would otherwise have required a lot of manual work.
The EBF team helped the school’s technology team configure Apple School Manager, then created the new Jamf School profiles and organized them into groups according to their grades. This ensured that all students and teachers had access to relevant applications and data after the migration. Individually – depending on their grade and class affiliation.
Apple School Manager was used for the actual migration process of the student devices. This allows devices to be reconfigured from scratch and connected to a mobile device management system—without the need for manual steps. The EBF experts prepared the automatic device registration and assigned the devices in Apple School Manager to the new Jamf School system. This allowed the school administrators to wipe all devices, which triggered automatic registration on the new Jamf School server. Apple School Manager and automatic device registration will also save a lot of effort in the future when distributing new devices.
EBF was even able to carry out the migration process for the teachers’ iPad devices without resetting the devices, so that their data was still automatically available after the migration. To do this, EBF used a solution developed specifically for such scenarios, the EBF Onboarder. This makes it possible to migrate devices from one MDM system to another in a largely automated process – without much effort on the part of administrators and users. Since this would also have required access to the source system, EBF used another feature of the EBF Onboarder as a workaround and solved the problem by bulk importing the teachers’ email addresses.
Due to the many special features, an initial test phase was particularly important. Together with the administrators, EBF tested all settings and processes to ensure that the migration would run smoothly and that both device management and digital teaching and learning would subsequently be possible as desired.
The result
This made it possible to successfully complete the project within six weeks. The students and teachers at St. Thomas More School were able to start homeschooling immediately after the holidays. Since then, they have always had the option of learning digitally and can conduct their lessons at home just as successfully as they would on campus. The school is now well equipped for the future and can integrate digital formats into its teaching concept whenever it makes sense or is necessary.
Engagement with effect
“This school year would not have been possible without the dedicated support of the Jamf and EBF teams. Thanks to their professional collaboration with our school, we were able to get off to the best possible start in a school year that was fraught with uncertainty. Their commitment ensured that we were able to smoothly transition to a technological environment in which we can use our resources more efficiently, spend less time managing our infrastructure, and have access to the digital tools that best meet the needs of our students and teachers.”
Why is Jamf School so well suited for schools?
Jamf School enables school administrators to remotely set up, manage, secure, and equip Apple devices with relevant data and applications, and to assign different access rights to teachers and students. Teachers can use the Jamf School Teacher app to easily distribute teaching materials to their classes, create a focused learning environment by temporarily restricting functionality during class, and support students in their learning. Parents can use the Jamf School Parent app to ensure that their children can learn without distractions at certain times of the day on privately purchased devices. And students have access to all relevant applications and documents via the Jamf School Student app and can use and edit them independently. Various functions allow them to contact their teacher for help.
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