I am a teacher working in LAUSD (I know) and our school is deploying iPads to the faculty for the fall. Our district's method of tracking iPads and using the Volume Pricing seems overly complicated and time consuming for our tech guy, who is also a teacher. It requires us to sync each unit to a desktop machine at school and create individual emails for every faculty member. It seems to not allow for use of iCloud or anyone's existing apple ID. My question is there has to be a better way that would provide similar protection against theft (thru find my iPhone), allow us to use our VPP, and allow us to utilize iCloud. Any suggestions?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPad Educational Use
- Thread starter trojan22
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Forget about tracking, which is no good as someone can easily wipe the iPad to eliminate tracking.
To discourage theft, engrave in big letters, PROPERTY OF XXX SCHOOL. IF FOUND, CALL XXX. I can't guarantee it won't be stolen, but it'll be much less likely.
Everyone could sign in with their own Apple ID, then designate one iPad/ID as the master iPad, and set up Find My Friends so the master iPad tracks all other iPads. I think you can set up restrictions on each iPad so people can't tamper with the Find My Friends setup, but I'm not sure. Won't stop a knowledgable thief from wiping the iPad, but should work to quickly keep tabs on where all the iPads are.
I'm the tech coordinator at an LAUSD school. We explored iPad deployment earlier this year (primarily for DIEBELS) and we were also told that we'd have to use 3 IDs -- one for VPP, one for the device to download the free stuff, and one for "Find my iPad". I agree that it seems rather convulted, but this is one time where I can understand why it is necessary.
1. VPP ID is there is keep teachers/students from spending district funds. This ID is never used on the device itself, the volume purchases are made on a regular computer.
2. Individual Apple IDs are required because each device must purchase its own apps (via VPP redemption codes). Technically, you could set up all the iPads with 1 email and have iCloud wirelessly push apps to all of them. However, the problem is that schools don't qualify for single user licenses and being able to buy an app once and have it available across all devices would be a violation and constitute piracy.
3. There is a separate "Find my iPhone" ID because of all the privacy concerns over the feature, so the district wants to restrict the ID to administrators only.
1. VPP ID is there is keep teachers/students from spending district funds. This ID is never used on the device itself, the volume purchases are made on a regular computer.
2. Individual Apple IDs are required because each device must purchase its own apps (via VPP redemption codes). Technically, you could set up all the iPads with 1 email and have iCloud wirelessly push apps to all of them. However, the problem is that schools don't qualify for single user licenses and being able to buy an app once and have it available across all devices would be a violation and constitute piracy.
3. There is a separate "Find my iPhone" ID because of all the privacy concerns over the feature, so the district wants to restrict the ID to administrators only.
I understand the rationale but my feeling is that it is typical of the district to make things more difficult than they should be. That said, I have a question: why can't each device be set up with existing apple IDs? Can't they use th VPP codes? And if that's the case, cant people switch their App store login after the fact to purchase or add apps from their personal account?
In this case, I think the complications have more to do with the lack of multi user/Volume Licensing support on the iPad itself.
They don't want you to use your personal Apple IDs because the apps are owned by the ID that redeems them. So you run into an issue where the school is buying apps that they do not own. Imagine how much of a mess it becomes when teachers leave or the iPad changes hands -- the school would constantly have to repurchase all those apps again.
Instead, they require you to create Apple IDs that the school has full ownership/access to.
Honestly, I don't know what happens if you use the school owned Apple ID to redeem codes and then switch to your personal Apple ID. I have to imagine that when its time to sync someone's apps will be wiped from the devices.
I understand that now. Last night I found this Apple document that outlines how to create a Layered Ownership Model, among other things
http://images.apple.com/education/docs/IOS_5_Education_Deployment_Guide.pdf
Basically, each end user can use their own personal Apple ID after the initial set up when they sync the iPad with a base station that uses the school's Apple ID. The document even suggests using iCloud and other personal services to back up because doing that on the computer itself will take time and space. Thanks for the help.