Jamf, which specializes in Apple management, has announced that the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) chose Jamf and Apple for its PowerUp program, an initiative aimed to address issues of socioeconomic inequality and traditional teaching practices with technology.
The district provides MacBook Air laptops to every student in grades six through eleven and uses Jamf to manage over 50,000 Apple devices.
In 2015, when the PowerUp program was launched, EPISD leaders knew their existing HP laptops wouldn’t allow them to create what they felt 21st-century learning needed to be, so they turned to Apple. In the summer of 2017, the district distributed 15,000 MacBook Airs to students in grades six through nine. In August of 2018, they rolled out another 12,000 devices. Now, all students in grades six through eleven have MacBooks.
“Roughly 75% of Brown’s students wouldn’t have access to quality computers at home without the PowerUp program,” says Isaac Williams, assistant principal, Brown Middle School. “With this initiative, we were able to change that and create a culture that’s adaptive to our students’ needs. We can now ensure that every kid has an equitable opportunity to have that freedom of learning different things, of developing different skills and becoming the best version of themselves.”
Using Jamf, EPISD staff had very little downtime with the hardware itself, getting to put the devices directly into students’ hands.
“I’ve had experience with other MDMs, and Jamf is very comprehensive and very well thought out, well designed,” says Jose Sanchez, an EPISD system support analyst. “Jamf Pro’s streamlined user interface and powerful toolset simplifies device management and makes it easy for me, as an administrator, to oversee the system and make sure it’s running smoothly.”
To learn more, read the case study here.
