Onscreen Passcode and Configurator support for AppleTV Deployments

Posted on 10/14/2012 by William Stites

With the latest release of both AppleTV 5.1 and iOS 6 Apple takes steps to provide better enterprise support for the AppleTV.

In an earlier post (Considerations for deploying the AppleTV in your school or enterprise) I pointed out that there needed to be better options for centralized management and a more robust way to deal with passwords.  Apple’s taken steps to improve both of these.

Prior to the 5.1 update you could set a password to control AirPlay access to your AppleTV.  Once entered into the iPad the password was stored in the device.  While this provided a layer of access control and security it didn’t prevent someone with the password from taking control of the device during a presentation or inadvertently hijacking the AppleTV while on the network.

With the 5.1 release Apple has introduced an onscreen passcode that is required to before you can begin AirPlaying to the device.  It also prohibits the hijacking of the device while someone is connected to it and an added level of security.  It is important to note that iOS 6 is required in order for the onscreen passcode to work so plan accordingly if you have a number of devices to update.

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Making the case for a solid state drive (SSD) in your 1:1 Initiative

Posted on 09/30/2012 by William Stites

Let’s start this with a little game, name this sound…

OK… back the sound in a bit.

You have a lot of decisions to make when you are planning a 1:1 Learning Initiative, one of which has to do with the type of hardware you are going to use.

A little over 2 years ago we made the choice to go with 13″ Macbook Pro laptops.  We got them with 4 GB of RAM and a 256 GB hard drive.  So far they have been working very well, but when you buy over 1000 devices you’re bound to have some trouble.

We’ve had a number of user related issues, the biggest being damaged screens, but as far as warrantee related repairs they’ve fallen in two categories: logic boards and hard drives.

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Posted in 1to1, Technical | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Evernote Trunk Conference: Rethinking Education (Video)

Posted on 09/30/2012 by William Stites
Me with Phil Libin. I was geeked out!

Me with Phil Libin. I was geeked out!

On August 24th, 2012, Reshan Richards (@reshanrichards) and I, along with Rob Van Nood (@evernotefolios) had the opportunity to speak at the Evernote Trunk Conference on “Rethinking Education” with Evernote.

Reshan and I discussed how we came to use Evernote at our school, providing actual examples of student and teacher use. Rob spoke about he is using Evernote for portfolio assessment with students.

The day before we spoke to a smaller group during an all day education event and once that video becomes available I will be sure to share it as well.

 

 
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What I did on my Summer Vacation.

Posted on 09/29/2012 by William Stites

With summer is officially over I feel it’s about time for that recap every person has asked to write at some point in their lives… What I did on my Summer Vacation.

While this isn’t necessarily going to be about what I did on my “vacation”, it is explore what ended up being a very busy but productive summer and three themes: engagement, productivity and giving back.

Let’s start with the truly fun stuff…

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Posted in 1to1, Conferences, Data Management, EdTech, Evernote, Social Media, Teaching & Learning | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What I did on my Summer Vacation.

Cloud Computing in Education

Posted on 07/12/2012 by William Stites

[Originally posted elsewhere on 7/28/2009, but the topic came up again in a conversation and thought to move the post here.]

Cloud computing is described by Wikipedia as:

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.[1][2] Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them.[3]

The concept generally incorporates combinations of the following:

The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on how the Internet is depicted in computer network diagrams and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals.[6]

OK… so what does this mean for schools and education in general? How do school use “the cloud“?

The conversations I’ve been involved with recently have focused on moving away from companies like Microsoft and Adobe and starting to use tools like Google Apps, Prezi and other Web 2.0 applications. The ability to collaborate and share information between multiple users and the development of 21st Century Skills has made for many interesting discussions.

The fact that these services are web based negates many of the issues related to platform and software version. You can be on an Apple running Safari, on a PC running Explore or on Linux running Opera and all of these services should run. They are all built around common web standards and with the exception of Microsoft everyone usually plays well within the standards. Bring in a device that is able to get online, runs a full-feature browser and you are good to go.

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Posted in EdTech, Evernote, Technical | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

The Breakfast Club library and John Hughes, both genius!

Posted on 05/27/2012 by William Stites

[NOTE: This was originally posted on another blog I no longer maintain.]

John Hughes was a genius!

From Mr. Mom, Vacation, Uncle Buck to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off his movies defined a generation. So while home on break, when I thought all I was going to do was sit back and watch t.v. and do nothing, The Breakfast Club comes on and I have an epiphany.

The library in that movie is PERFECT!

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Posted in Administration & Management, Design, Schools, Teaching & Learning | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Understanding Open Source

Posted on 05/26/2012 by William Stites

I am a big advocate of open source software.  We’ve used it at our school for a number of years.  Our firewall is an appliance called Untangle. We use open source software in the classroom including tools like Open Office to replace things like Microsoft Office and Genius as a tool that helps student use flashcards in a different way. WordPress drives many of our blog/web sites and we use Moodle as our course management system.

Open source software is distribute under a ‘General Public License‘ which according to its preamble:

“GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program–to make sure it remains free software for all its users.

Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.”

What this allows you to do is to is in essence own the software outright. No renewal fees, not software maintenance plans… it’s yours to use, modify and distribute any way you want.  The only catch is if you decide to share your changes and distribute the modified code you must do so under the GPL license.  Free in free out.

Free doesn’t equal open source. Freeware, shareware and ‘freemium’ based software and services are NOT open source as they are not distributed under the GPL code and don’t give you access to the source code to modify.

Open source provides schools with a number of really interesting options when trying to provide students with technology based tools and service to improve teaching, learning and assessment, but don’t have the budgets to do so.

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Posted in Administration & Management, Community, Moodle, Technical | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

COPPA and Verifiable Parental Consent

Posted on 05/22/2012 by William Stites

If you’ve spent anytime talking about an iPad deployment, AppleIDs, social media – particularly Facebook, how you can use Evernote (or many other web-based services) with students under the age of 13 you’ve more than likely been confused by COPPA. The Children’s Online Privacy Protect Act is what prohibits student under the age of 13 from using certain online tools and applications and has been a topic I have spent a lot of time on this year.

It started this past summer when I was talking to a friend (@cuevash) at the Laptop Institute about Evernote. and he asked me how we were handling COPPA with our under 13 students and I didn’t have a good answer for him.  It wasn’t something I had considered or, like most, really understood.

This prompted a series of discussions between Reshan Richards (@reshanrichards) and I about what services we were using at our school and which were COPPA complaint, which weren’t and which couldn’t we really make sense of.

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Posted in Administration & Management, COPPA, EdTech, Teaching & Learning | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments

Geeking out at the PSU MacAdmins Conference.

Posted on 05/06/2012 by William Stites

If you’re not pushing yourself you not growing.  Finding good opportunities and ways to push yourself professionally are often hard to come by, so when my colleague came back from the PSU MacAdmins conference last year and said “WOW” I knew I needed to go.

The PSU MacAdmins conference (@PSUMacAdmns / #psumacconf) brings together technology professionals that specialize in managing Apple hardware and software in education (K12 & Higher Ed), business and government to share their knowledge and best practice.

As my job puts me square in the middle of having to make decisions and managing much of this it was a great opportunity for me to learn more.  While I’m not getting dirty in this everyday, this conference offered me a great opportunity to talk, share and learn from others and will be on my short list of must attend conferences in the future.

Why do I say this and what did I learn?  Here is a glimpse into just some of it…

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Posted in 1to1, Administration & Management, AppleTV, Conferences, EdTech, Technical | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Geeking out at the PSU MacAdmins Conference.

The journey to a 1:1 Initiative.

Posted on 04/24/2012 by William Stites

What does a 1:1 Initiative look like and what did it take to achieve it? When you visit other school that have programs in place you often see the end result of what could have been a very long process and are left with the questions of how did they do that?

When looking at or talking with people about their program or initiatives it’s often to helpful to know where they’ve come from to understand where they are.

Our journey to our 1:1 Initiative was one that took over a decade and had us looking at our past and ongoing experience to help guide where we would end.  This is but a brief look at where we’ve come since 1999.

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Posted in 1to1, Administration & Management, EdTech, Teaching & Learning | 2 Comments