All iPads iPad/iBooks cart for Education

[ajbudis]

Hello All,

I'm looking to deploy iBooks to devices in a cart manner. I'm looking to mass deploy 25 laptops per cart with iBooks built into each iPad. The issue I am having is Configurator has no main stream way to configure iBooks. I also would like to use one Apple ID with all iPads. It would be a pain to configure Apple ID's for all iPads.

Does anyone have any workarounds?

Thank you so much for your thoughts.

Andrew

 

[DJLC]

Unfortunately, Apple's iBooks infrastructure really isn't designed for a cart-based approach. It's designed for a 1:1 implementation.

My best advice would be to load the iBooks (and configure the Apple ID) on one iPad, take a backup, and then restore that backup to the remaining iPads through Configurator.

I would caution you not to set up the Apple ID and to restrict iCloud via a Profile in Configurator. I think setting up the same ID on all of them would cause iBooks to be in sync with them all — ie., student 1 turns a page, the page turns on all the other iPads. Student 2 highlights a passage, the passage is highlighted on all the other iPads.

 

[charlyham]

There was recently an article in the forums about the new education policies from apple. Maybe this is what you are looking for. Here is a link to that.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1852681/

 

[ajbudis]

Unfortunately, Apple's iBooks infrastructure really isn't designed for a cart-based approach. It's designed for a 1:1 implementation.

My best advice would be to load the iBooks (and configure the Apple ID) on one iPad, take a backup, and then restore that backup to the remaining iPads through Configurator.

I would caution you not to set up the Apple ID and to restrict iCloud via a Profile in Configurator. I think setting up the same ID on all of them would cause iBooks to be in sync with them all — ie., student 1 turns a page, the page turns on all the other iPads. Student 2 highlights a passage, the passage is highlighted on all the other iPads.

In configurator, when I restore - the apps and SSID dont seem to follow over. Am I doing something wrong? The backup takes seconds as opposed to minutes. Typically through iTunes this takes a much longer duration.

I'm okay with these being unsupervised for now. I just cant seem to get the restore process through configurator to work as desired.


Thanks again to both of you for the support.
Andrew

 

[DJLC]

In configurator, when I restore - the apps and SSID dont seem to follow over. Am I doing something wrong? The backup takes seconds as opposed to minutes. Typically through iTunes this takes a much longer duration.

I'm okay with these being unsupervised for now. I just cant seem to get the restore process through configurator to work as desired.

So upon further thought / research, I don't think this is going to work at all. It's technically against iBooks licensing terms — schools purchase, say, 20 iBook codes. The codes must be assigned to students' personal Apple IDs (or individual IDs at least; you cannot redeem more than one with the same ID). Redemption is permanent; unlike with apps, you can't revoke the license. In a 1:1 environment, this forces schools to purchase iBooks every year, as students retain ownership of the iBooks. Unfortunately Apple as a whole really isn't on board with the idea of iPad carts, and I wouldn't expect this to change.

If you're just trying to distribute a PDF (or ePub you can convert into PDF), I'd suggest hosting it online somewhere and adding a web clip with Configurator.

Otherwise you're looking at manually configuring each iPad with the same ID and downloading the iBook individually. But keep in mind that this method is technically illegal — even for free iBooks.