CHICAGO—Educators will have new ways to use iOS in schools thanks to Apple's latest software update. On a stage at a school in Chicago today, Apple announced ClassKit, a new framework for making educational apps on iOS.
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Liveblog: Apple’s March 2018 education event in Chicago is this morning
We first learned of ClassKit when Apple users were sifting through a beta of iOS 11.3. It's a software development framework, in the tradition of prior Apple-developed frameworks like ARKit, HealthKit, and SpriteKit. This framework is focused on taking care of some of the heavy lifting for developers who are making apps for use in schools and other educational contexts.
ClassKit is part of a larger Apple initiative to gain grounds in schools around the world after Google's Chrome OS came to dominate the market. A 2015 test of iPads in Los Angeles schools ended early when the iPads proved to have inadequate features for controlling student use.
Apple also announced the new Apple School Manager program for school IT employees. This lets administrative IT officials create student profiles individually or in bulk incredibly quickly—thousands of profiles can be made in a few seconds. Apple School Manager will include 200GB of cloud storage, up from the traditional 5GB.
Apple's education event is still in progress. You can follow the action in real-time with our liveblog, and we'll continue to update this story as information becomes available.