A Good Start and a LVly Update

What a great start! Course Code is more visible than any other site I've written for so thank you to everyone who's visited in the last few days since it launched. I feel like I've finally created a good outlet and something I can build on. I'm still finding the voice and how narrow or wide the content on the site will range.

With that said I have one change I've made to those of you who've subscribed via RSS. I've migrated to URI.LV in order to track the RSS audience and would love it if you'd re-subscribe through the new address at http://feeds.uri.lv/coursecode.

I heard about URI.LV on episode 40 of Systematic where Brett Terpstra interviewed Myke Hurley of the infinitely great 70Decibels podcast network on the show. URI.LV is an RSS feed tracking and management service similar to the ill-fated FeedBurner. If you're currently a FeedBurner user there is a migration tool to pull all of your data into URI.LV and even silently update your RSS feed for redirection to the new address. I appreciate that the service is independently created and can be supported by allowing its users to pay for it.

Thanks again to everyone who's stopped by and for those yet to come!

Out of School 33: Extreme Focus

I joined Bradley on this week's episode of Course Code.

We talked about the Casper Focus announcement and touched on Bradley's post about how Dell just doesn't get the modern market of the Post-PC (which got Fireballed BTW). It was great to be on the show again and thanks to Bradley and Frasier for having me.

This is Course Code

Welcome to Course Code. I'm Cole.

This site is intended to be an ever evolving outlet for my technology interests and how they interweave into the education sector. I work at a non-profit educational organization that's growing by leaps and bounds and pushing boundaries on how technology can drive instruction in the classroom. Over the last few years I've seen the challenges faced by educational technology leaders and hope to share what I've seen and what's yet to come through different mediums here.

I don't intend to be selfish with the site though. I hope there are others that connect and if they have something to add I'd love to put the site into valet mode and give them a set of keys. All of this is experimental but I truly believe that the education sector is still in it's infancy in the adoption and implementation of technology so there should be plenty to share for years to come.

Welcome to the experiment.

Casper Focus: Giving Teachers Control of iOS

Update: Casper Focus and Version 8.7 of the Casper Suite are now available. Casper Focus can be downloaded from the App Store and you can download v8.7 of the Casper Suite (required for Casper Focus) from JAMFNation.

Let me start by saying that I'm not the expert on deploying and managing iPads en masse. Yet.

I'm slowly beginning to implement iPads into our schools and if the forward momentum is a sign this isn't going to slow down anytime soon. Apple has dominated the education market with a product that's intimate, engaging and focused; all fantastic attributes of a solution education is asking for. One of the big things that's missing from that experience is control. Teachers and administrators need control of the technology in their classroom. Many use tools such as Remote Desktop to do this with OS X but what options are there for the iPad?

Today JAMF Software announced a new product called Casper Focus to address this specific need and to help enable iPads to take another step forward into the classroom. If you aren't familiar with JAMF and your managing more than a handful of Apple products you should get to know them. The Casper Suite is a set of tools designed to centrally manage and maintain all of your OS X and iOS devices (and even capture inventory of your Windows machines). Today's announcement includes a forthcoming update to the Casper Suite that will enable this new iOS app (for iPad only, for now) to do a few very intriguing things.

Casper Focus gives teachers a simplified interface to certain MDM level features of iOS in order to lead and control the iPads within their classrooms. The core features for the initial release allow teachers to view information about the iPads in their classroom, reset passcodes and guide (and even lock) iPads into certain applications. Putting these features into teachers hands and removing the IT support staff from the picture to make things such as this a reality is very exciting.

The best part of the whole announcement today was the price. The application will be free. The goal is obviously to bring more iPads customers into the Casper Suite fold as the Casper Suite is requred. Even so, the fact that JAMF isn't charging anything for these new capabilities is reassuring in our own purchase of the Casper Suite. This will be an application to continue to watch.