Tag: apple

  • Tour of New Apple TV (March 2016)

    This evening I finished watching yesterday’s Apple Special Event video, in which Apple employees announced various product updates and refreshes. One of the updates I’m most interested in is the update to AppleTV. Among other things, it allows apps to be organized into folders, the same way users can organize apps on iOS devices like…

  • Triple Threat in Tech: A Reflection

    Last week I wrote the post, “MakerSpace Resources & Ideas for Digital Music Creation,” and recommended the 2013 K-12 Online Conference presentation, “T3:Triple Threat in Tech: Art, Music, and Media” by Carol Broos (@carolbroos). Although I know Carol and the amazing teacher she interviewed at the start of this video, Tricia Fugelstad (@fuglefun), I had never watched this…

  • Upgrade to Mac OS X 10.11 “El Capitan” Options

    This is an email I sent out today to all faculty/staff at our school. The majority of our teachers have Macbook Pro laptops. Feel free to copy/re-use any of this email text if desired. We have setup the Software Update service in OS X Server so when faculty/staff install Mac updates from their laptops they can get…

  • Taylor Swift’s Letter to Apple and Digital Citizenship

    Our 15 year daughter is understandably taken with Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13). Last night we were considering joining Apple Music so she could watch Taylor’s 1989 World Tour Live show, which is exclusive to Apple Music. As a result of those conversations, this morning I watched Taylor’s 20 minute interview with Zane Lowe (@zanelowe), which is available within…

  • Remove Genieo Malware from a Mac

    Back in October of 2013 I wrote the post, “Beware of Genieo Adware on Apple Computers.” This was the first time someone in our family accidentally installed an adware/malware program on one of our Mac laptops. Today at school, one of our staff members was searching for free Christmas card templates, and ended up installing Genieo…

  • Pushing Free and Paid iPad Apps using Meraki MDM

    Since I became the director of technology for Casady School in Oklahoma City this past July, I’ve learned how to configure our Meraki MDM (Mobile Device Manager) to “push” both free and paid apps onto the iPads in our upper division (high school) library and middle division / lower division (grades 1-8) library. Apple specifies…

  • Planning for Smart School Network Management

    As a new school technology director, I’ve been visiting with lots of folks lately about the ways school networks can be configured to manage network bandwidth for users, safely keep the network fairly open for content access by students and faculty/staff, and also provide for network accountability when administrators want to know “who did what”…

  • Why You Want to GateKeep Your Teen’s iOS Apps

    If your kids have iPhones and/or iPads, it’s a good idea to enable Family Sharing on your Apple IDs / iTunes accounts and on your iOS devices. Family sharing permits parents to approve or decline/disallow child requests to purchase apps and music from iTunes and the Apple App Store. Depending on the age of your…

  • iPhone Charging Mystery Solved: Pocket Lint Was The Culprit

    For the past couple months, my son has had problems charging his iPhone5. The cable wouldn’t consistently make contact, so sometimes the phone would fully charge overnight, and sometimes it wouldn’t. He had to adjust the lightning adapter plug “just right” so it would charge, and we weren’t sure if this was something that could…

  • Benefits of Updating a Home WiFi Router to Apple’s Time Capsule

    This weekend our family finally made the jump to upgrade our home wifi router. For the past three years, we’ve been using a second generation AirPort Extreme wifi router which I stumbled upon at a local pawn shop. Prior to that time, we’d just used “el cheapo” Linksys (now Belkin, formerly Cisco) and Netgear routers…