Jamf rolls out watchOS device control app for parents

Jamf, an Apple enterprise management provider, has released a new watchOS app designed to support parents, teachers, and students as they adapt to a remote learning environment.

While schools are closed and shifting the bulk of their lessons online, the education sector has rapidly evolved their teaching practices to accommodate the remote learning experience.

Jamf has rolled out the Parent watchOS app as part of its Jamf Pro and Jamf School offerings. According to the company, Jamf Parent automatically syncs with the parent iPhone.  Parents and educators can then use their iPhone or Apple Watch to monitor their children's devices.

"Jamf is committed to doing everything we can to help schools and families support remote learning during this unprecedented time," says Jamf chief customer officer Sam Johnson.

"Parents struggle to balance working remotely and ensuring their children stay on task while learning at home. Now with new functionality like Jamf Parent available on the Apple Watch, it is faster and more convenient to make real-time remote actions to help students continue their learning at home from school iPads."

Parents can:

• Restrict which apps and features their child can access on their device, including games and social media.
• Schedule homework or bed time and apply associated restrictions on device capabilities.
• Track student device location and set up notifications.

Jamf School, a mobile device management solution built for education, also includes new features in its School Teacher app. They include:

• Raise Hand – This new feature improves student and teacher communication, allowing students to raise their hand virtually, triggering a notification to teachers to respond via Chat or email immediately.
• Teacher Guide – This in-app guide allows teachers to see helpful tips on how to teach remotely, complete with videos and tutorials.
• Share a Lesson – This feature strengthens teacher to teacher collaboration, allowing teachers to share a custom lesson, with set-up restrictions, shared apps and whitelisted websites, with other teachers.

Jamf announced global availability of Jamf School and the availability of the Jamf Parent app in Jamf Pro last November.

Jamf says its mission is to help schools succeed with Apple. The company also offers a range of enterprise device management solutions for Apple products.

Its solutions suite includes Jamf Pro, Jamf Now, Jamf Connect, and Jamf Protect. They have all recently been upgraded to support Apple's spring operating system release.

Jamf says that IT administrators can allow upgrades through Jamf as soon as they wish to do so.