It was nice to get back in the swing of things this week, delivering a webinar to an engaged audience on some of the principles of modern management of devices in education.
You can watch the video above if you’re keen for a recap of the session, and I’ll include a link to the PDF version of the deck I shared here if you want to download a copy:
Why Manage Devices?
Thankfully, this question is being asked less by schools these days, as they pivot towards “how best to manage devices?” but laying a solid foundation for the why is still critical in my mind and I opened the discussion with this slide:
A managed device delivers better learning outcomes
I’m a steadfast believer in this quote and, for me at least, we should never lose sight of the fact that technology and devices are a tool to enable educational progress, and not an end unto themselves. It was heartening to get feedback through the chat in the webinar that the audience were focused on a similar line of “keeping the main thing, the main thing” – education!
One of the key messages I wanted to land were the benefits of moving to modern device management over more traditional approaches (or legacy) management of devices. Some of the benefits of this modern approach are obvious:
I was genuinely (and very pleasantly) surprised to learn on the call that the majority of attendees were well on their way to modern management. Through the use of interactive polls in Microsoft Teams, some of these trends became evident:
Given my previous work with Microsoft and focus on Intune managed Windows devices, I enjoyed doing some “myth busting” around the management experience of Windows. I kicked off this section discussing the following:
I then shared the timelapse of setting up a Windows device in under ten minutes, worked that I’d prepared in advance of presenting at Bett Asia in Bangkok last year. Ultimately, It’s important to help educate our customers to the advancements that have been made in making Windows more easily managed from the cloud. Newer operating systems like iPadOS and ChromeOS were essentially ‘born in the cloud’ with an MDM-first mindset, however Windows has come a long way to being more easily managed from the cloud too.
In response to a poll question around future device purchases, nearly 30% of attendees did indicate they would consider Windows devices if they could manage them as easily as an iPad or ChromeBook, with another 28% unsure.
Final Thoughts
My takeaway from this is that schools both want (and need) easier manage of all their devices, irrespective of the OS choice they are making. Keeping devices secure and ready for learning is paramount and taking a modern management approach to this is the most cost and time effective way to do this.
This was evident in the final video case study I shared at the end of the webinar, on the partnership between Saint Kentigern College, Dynabook and Cyclone with a fully managed BYOD program. You can watch this here:
