The concept of the bring your own device (BYOD) philosophy has given rise to a lot of new and exciting possibilities. Not just limited to the enterprise market, BYOD has gone into the schools as well, allowing an array of mobile devices to join the fray in the classroom. Recently, St. Virgil's College got in on the mobile device revolution itself with a big order of iPads for students and teachers alike, but keeping the devices properly managed--on a comparatively slim budget to boot--was going to prove no easy feat...at least, until MaaS360 got involved.
By way of background, St. Virgil's College is one of the oldest boys' colleges in Tasmania, and also one of the most respected. For it to get involved with mobile devices says volumes about the faith it has in these devices and their value in the classroom. But still, proper management of these devices is essential to get the most value out of them, and so St. Virgil turned to MaaS360 for its mobile device management setup.
St. Virgil's College already had some experience with a similar situation, as its director of information services--who also serves as the school's math, information technology and religious instruction teacher--Richard Lawler, had previously managed a group of 30 iPads thanks to the iPhone (News - Alert) Configurator. But stepping up to a field of 900 devices, well, that was going to be exponentially different. First, Lawler considered using Mac OS X Lion Server, which would have met the school's needs budget-wise, but was sorely lacking on several fronts, including the mobile device management functions as well as the necessarily level of mobile applications management and document management tools.
Lawler turned to a variety of other tools--on the list were tools like the JAMF Software release of Casper Suite as well as Silverback, MobileIron, Zenprise (News - Alert) and several others. But in the end, MaaS360 won out thanks to its ability to easily work with a cloud-based environment, a quick and easy setup process, an array of different features, app reporting and a price that made the school's budget personnel very happy indeed.
MaaS360 opened up a variety of extra possibilities; the document management tools gave students a lot of help both turning in their homework and receiving it back, graded, in rapid fashion. Dialogue improved as students were able to better explore their environments with the tablets--after all, a PC can be easily locked down in the event of misuse, but a tablet isn't so easy to do that with--and in turn found valuable lessons in responsibility.
There was quite a bit of value to be had with the institution of MaaS360 as the mobile device management structure for St. Virgil's College, so for those in a likewise situation, turning to MaaS360 is likely to pay some fairly substantial dividends in terms of reduced costs and improved effectiveness.
Edited by Rachel Ramsey