Speirs - speirs.org - Fraser Speirs

Latest News:

The Refresh - Day One 14 Aug 2013 | 12:18 am

Our new set of iPads rolled in today. We have gone with 4th Generation 9.7" iPad, WiFi and, this time, 32GB. What follows is a story about opening boxes. In the UK, iPads ship in what is basically th...

Using OmniPlan for Teaching 1 Jul 2013 | 01:07 pm

It's that time of the year when teachers everywhere start to think about the next academic session. School children everywhere think of it as "the first day of the summer holidays" but little do they ...

Podcast: Apple's Daniel Craig 17 Jun 2013 | 01:07 pm

I'll have some more to say about WWDC later once I've thought through all the many implications. Nevertheless, here's a first-impressions podcast with Bradley and me where we chat about our thoughts o...

A theory on what "App Store Volume Purchase" may be 11 Jun 2013 | 07:12 pm

At WWDC, one of Apple's famous 'mini text' slides appeared where they show a couple of dozen feature titles in text too small to read in the ten or so seconds the slide is up. One of those features, ...

iOS 7 Education Wish List 4 Jun 2013 | 12:54 pm

I wrote recently about my iOS 7 "power user" wish list. Those were not education-specific but borne out of experience trying to push how much I use iOS personally. Here are some additions that I thin...

Podcast: Carrot and Stick 3 Jun 2013 | 06:27 pm

It's Monday, so it's time for another episode of Out of School. This time, Bradley and I talk about Mobile Device Management (MDM) servers. What does an MDM server do? Why might you want one? How do ...

The Butcher's Bill 28 May 2013 | 02:40 am

So we are coming up on three years with the iPad 1. I thought it would be interesting to look back at our damage rate and see how things went. I've kept a log of when devices were replaced and why. T...

Out of School Podcast: Apple Configurator and Configuration Profiles 27 May 2013 | 02:16 pm

I haven't always been very prompt at promoting my podcast here on the blog, but the last three episodes are, in my opinion, really, really good. Bradley and I talked in so much detail about Apple Con...

iPad Disaster Recovery in Institutional Model Deployments 23 May 2013 | 12:54 pm

I've been working intensely on the deployment models for our iPad refresh in August. Our current deployment model dates back to 2010 and a time before Apple Configurator, Volume Purchase and MDM. Back...

The iOS 7 Power User Challenge 6 May 2013 | 01:25 pm

That the growth in iOS has been phenomenal hardly needs to be stated any more. To people like me, though, who have been Apple users since the Mac Classic, it's been an amazing ride. In 2008, after th...

Recently parsed news:

Recent searches: