Managing a 1 to 1 Macintosh Laptop Deployment in Education

[tlarkin]

Hello Everyone,

I recently presented on this topic at the JAMF National User Conference. Being that this topic is very broad and big I have decided to open up this discussion to further look into running a 1 to 1 laptop deployment. I will try hard to answer your questions as best I can.

Also, I encourage other 1 to 1 deployments to chime and and speak about what they are doing. Over the years JAMF has sent a lot of potential 1 to 1 deployments to me with their questions and concerns, and I will be glad to try to keep this discussion going.

Thanks,
Tom aka t-lark

[Joseph_Morris]

My best suggestion for running a 1 to 1 laptop deployment is to get your staff trained in repairing the laptops. It will not only save money, but allow for faster turnaround should one become broken or damaged. At Westside we have made sure that everyone working within our 1 to 1 program is a Certified Apple Technician so that we can order parts, repair machines, as well as troubleshoot any issues that may arise within Apple Software. It makes our day to day lives much easier.

[charliethacker]

Farmington Municipal Schools is in our 4th year of a learning initiative which focuses on 21st Century Education and that has, as a technology component, a 1:1 deployment of laptops for grades 6-12. The students have these laptops 24/7 during the school year. We currently have about 5,300 laptops assigned to students at the middle and high school levels. We have created some of our own tools to assist in the deployment, management and tracking of these assets as well as having implemented some 3rd party tools. Our recent commitment to JAMF is proving to be of great benefit to us and we see some excellent opportunities for integrating our current solutions and processes with the tools that JAMF provides.

We are also an Apple Self Servicing district and have 2 (soon to be 3) full time Apple Certified Technicians on staff. This solution is one that is ripe for debate regarding the actual costs of doing your own service vs. insurance and outside repair centers.

We began planning for the 1:1 environment 7 years prior to actually handing laptops out to students. We worked on improving our infrastructure and technology staff first, we then deployed laptops to all staff prior to any students having them 24/7 and we created mobile computing environments in all schools to get staff and students familiar with a mobile technology solution for education. Our professional development has been ongoing and cannot be undervalued in its impact on the success of a 1:1 environment.

Our program has gone through many changes and we are currently evaluating the future of the concept and the specifics of how it will look in the coming years. As our focus is on 21st Century Education (http://www.p21.org) technology is but one aspect of our initiative but we feel it is an important one and should become an integral part of the educational process.

We are always willing to share our experiences and to learn from others. I look forward to this discussion thread's gathering of the minds.

http://district.fms.k12.nm.us
http://district.fms.k12.nm.us/fli
http://district.fms.k12.nm.us/staff/cthacker

Charles Thacker
Chief Technology Officer
Farmington Municipal Schools
cthacker@fms.k12.nm.us
505-599-8787

[thomasC]

1 to 1 in Higher Ed anyone? We are doing 1 to 1 at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. It's a bring your own MBP. The program is going into it's fifth year. This year was the first using Casper Imaging and it was a life saver. I am looking to start providing Self Service this Fall for the Students. Anyone doing this in Higher Ed?

t-lark are you gearing this thread to K-12? If so I would like to start a discussion specifically around 1 to 1 in Higher Ed.

[tlarkin]

Actually no, I just specifically have experience in education. I guess it would be OK to broaden the topic to 1 to 1 deployments across the board. Enterprise, higher ed, K-12, non profit, whatever.

Most of the time a 1 to 1 will have similar enterprise needs across the board on the technology side. Only the users, methods, policy and process are different.

Thanks for sharing. I honestly think colleges should include laptops in their tuition costs to ensure every student has a laptop. I also think digital text books should be lumped into tuition costs as well to avoid any sort of DRM/license issue and when a student signs up for college they just pick their laptop up from the campus store and it is already imaged, configured and ready to go.

[tanderson]

@thomasC - we're essentially a 1 to 1 program here at Shenandoah. We're three years in and each incoming student is provided with a MacBook Pro. We just started using Casper this summer and it's been a big win for us already.

We're definitely pushing Self Service for our students, faculty, and staff and they have been using it. We just crossed 1,000 installations through Self Service this week and most of those were for apps that normally would have required a visit to our help desk. So far so good.

[Zvordauk]

Thanks for setting up this thread Tom. We are about to embark on a number of 1-1 rollouts next summer (all iPad so far). I look forward to picking the communal brains :)

Regards
Ger...

[tlarkin]

I tend to put all optional installs on self service. Just make sure your wireless is good to go if you are doing laptops/iPads. If you are 1 to 1 desktops that isn't really a problem as they should all be wired connections.

[thomasC]

@tanderson - So I assume you provide the initial image for the student systems. How are the students paying for MBP? Is it included in their tuition? How are you managing software licenses? We are using Sassafras Key Server. Works for most software. Various license servers for other specialized software. How are you upgrading students systems when you have an OS upgrade? Do students bring systems somewhere for re-imaging?

[tanderson]

@thomasC - The cost of the MBP is included in the Technology Fee charged to the students each semester ($500). We do provide the image for the student systems and faculty/staff too. For our major distribution of MBPs each August, we use a third party vendor to load the image and asset tag the systems. We don't have the space here to do it.

For software licensing, we have site licenses for MS Office and a volume license from Apple for iLife and iWork. That's really about all we put on them aside from some small free utilities and McAfee. We have our optional software like IBM SPSS and VirtualBox available through Self Service. We have campus licenses for SPSS and Windows 7 as well.

For OS upgrades, with Snow Leopard the students would bring the Mac to our walk up help desk and leave it there while our help desk staff did the upgrade. I'm hoping to handle the Lion upgrades through Self Service using Greg Neagle's InstallLion.pkg setup. So far in testing, that's working well (now if Lion would just cooperate with our mobile accounts). If a computer needs reimaged, they just bring it by the walk up help desk and it's done there.

Hope that helps.