The desktop/laptop market is most certainly dominated by Microsoft Windows as it has been for many years now. This is especially true amongst business users as the overwhelming majority of business applications run on Microsoft Windows. However, the market share for Apple’s Mac OS is on the rise, and has been for the last 5-10 years. In the last year alone, Apple’s market share has grown nearly 30% and currently stands at 10.9% (Source: Ars Technica) And while Microsoft rules in the business world, Apple has always enjoyed a strong following amongst educational institutions.

Apple provides a robust suite of utilities in their iLife programs that many students use to create DVD’s, presentations, photo projects, web sites, etc. When students graduate and begin their careers, many will need to understand Microsoft Windows based applications as well in order to be competitive in the job market. So many schools are beginning to use mixed environments of both Macintosh and Windows based PC’s in their curriculum. This gives the student a good mix of both systems and better prepares them to be ready for whatever computing platform they may find themselves using when they start their career.

While this mix of computing is wonderful for students, it can wreak havoc on the technology administrators who have to maintain the computing systems. In many cases you find institutions that have separate usernames and passwords for both platforms and have varying capabilities in terms of desktop and user management. This type of scenario is a system administrator’s worst nightmare as they lose the ability to properly maintain the computing environment. So what is the answer? For many, Active Directory and Open Directory Integration.

Active Directory (AD) and Open Directory (OD) are two separate directory services based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. Both are responsible for storing user account information, computer account information, information regarding shared files and folders on servers, management settings for desktops, etc. AD is the directory service utilized by Microsoft Windows based servers while OD is utilized by Apple Mac OS Servers. In the past they were used separately which meant having your Windows computers and users tied into AD while your Mac OS computers and users were tied into OD. And since the two systems are incapable of synchronizing user account information, this meant two accounts for all users that utilize both systems. That has all changed in the last few years as work has been done to allow the two systems to integrate with one another making the job of the system administrator much easier.

So how does it all work? Generally speaking you would have at least one Microsoft Windows Active Directory server and one Mac OS X Open Directory Server. The Mac OS X server would be bound to the Windows AD server, and all Mac OS X clients are then bound to both directory services. Once setup and configured properly, this allows for seamless usage of the systems in your environment by the end users. A student can go to their Intro to Business class and login to a Microsoft Windows computer to run applications like Microsoft Office, QuickBooks, etc. and then go to Intro to Web Design the next hour and login to an Apple Mac OS X computer using the same account to run applications like Adobe InDesign, iLife, etc, making their life much easier!

What about the system administrator though? How does this benefit them? Well for starters they have half the accounts to manage! All user accounts are stored in Active Directory so no account management is necessary in Open Directory. This also makes setting up file shares and home drives much easier. Since the same accounts can be used on both Windows and Mac OS X computers, file shares and permissions only have to be setup once. The user can then access his or her files regardless of what operating system they are using. This also allows for the most thorough desktop management capabilities possible. The system administrator can utilize Group Policies to manage various aspects of the Microsoft Windows computers such as access to system settings, ability to install applications, etc. Likewise, they can utilize Managed Preferences in Open Directory to control the same types of settings on the Apple Mac OS computers. The end result is an environment in which both of the major computing platforms can be utilized seamlessly with minimal impact on the users or the system administrators.

Setting up this type of environment definitely requires planning and a thorough understanding of both Active Directory and Open Directory, but if the system administrator is willing to put in a little bit of time gaining an understanding of how to integrate these two technologies, Windows and Mac OS can most certainly co-exist peacefully in your environment.

Justin is a Lead Solutions Analyst at Infrastructure Technology Solutions, and blogs (from his Mac) at www.iowatechtalk.com

              

Apple’s iPad is finally here.

Amid the hype and speculation of its features and design are also the musings of educators seeking to enhance student learning experiences in their classrooms.

Educational soundboards everywhere are asking readers for ideas on how to utilize the new iPad in their classrooms.

More than finding ways to integrate technology into the classroom with the iPad, I’m interested to see how this will affect application development through the App Store, and, most importantly – whether it will drive change in textbook publishing.

Online textbooks are more readily available, and what better way to interact with your studies than to curl up with an iPad?  You can use your fingers to zoom, scroll and flip pages, and there are no library fines for dog-eared pages.

What we need, though, is the ability to annotate your textbook and make choices about learning.

Is reading text enough for you?  Or, do you need to doodle in the margins, underline and highlight words, or even jot thoughts down on a sticky note.  Maybe you need to hear the text, or see a video, image, or animation?  Perhaps you would learn best by interacting with an applet on your eReader and stacking up bricks to make a physics theorem really ‘happen’?

Going further, perhaps you think of a question while reading and want to leave it on the blog of an expert.  Or, you have finished reading your assignment and want to take the end of chapter quiz to check your comprehension – with immediate feedback, of course.   Maybe something you read catches your attention, so you record a sound file with your thoughts and tag it to a certain phrase from the text for pondering later.   There are also links to further reading, videos, websites, blogs and assignments, all provided by your teacher.  These textbook interactions are where education is headed.

In a study released last week by The Kaiser Family Foundation, groups of students were observed and surveyed in 1999, 2004 and 2009 about their media use.  Theses students, ages 8-18, are spending 8-10 hours of their day interacting with media devices like phones, computers, mp3 players, and TVs.  The study also reported that students with the highest number of hours media use reported the lowest grades, most discipline problems, and most feelings of boredom, sadness or fatigue.

I hear many educators discuss how technology integration – especially with devices like the iPad – will be the savior that our institutions need.  Collaboration and access to resources will increase, as well as enthusiasm and participation.  But if students are already spending all of their waking hours outside of school engrossed in some sort of media device, won’t teachers still be struggling to find new ways to captivate their audience, even if they do have a shiny new Apple?