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U.S. Schools Experiencing Issues with iPad Supervision Profiles on iOS 7

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Apr 12, 2001
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Various schools across the United States are reporting that Apple's new iOS 7 mobile operating system has removed the supervision profiles they had installed on educational iPads, reports AllThingsD. Specifically, the installation of the new software on educational iPads is leaving them free of filters and without remote administrator privileges, an issue that allows students to access any content they may find on the Internet through the iPad's various apps.

ipad_education_books.png
A number of schools that have upgraded their iPad deployments to iOS 7 say installing the new OS removed the supervision profiles they had installed on the devices. This rendered those iPads unsupervised, depriving administrators of their remote management privileges and eliminating the filtering protections they had established to protect students from inappropriate content they might stumble upon outside school.

"Apple did not realize that installing iOS 7 would remove our (and thousands of organizations across the country) safety protection measure, which now makes the iPad devices unfiltered when accessing the Internet away from school," said a memo from the Manitou Springs (Colo.) School District 14 to parents, verified by AllThingsD. "In the short term, the district will be collecting iPad devices at the end of each day until the safety protection measure is reinstalled."
Click to expand...
Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told AllThingsD that Apple is "aware of this issue and will have a fix this month", with an Apple Support Communities thread spanning two pages for users and administrators that have been affected by the issue. Last week, a similar issue was reported in the Los Angeles Unified School District, in which the home use of educational iPads was halted after students bypassed content restrictions.

Article Link: U.S. Schools Experiencing Issues with iPad Supervision Profiles on iOS 7
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/03/u-s-schools-experiencing-issues-with-ipad-supervision-profiles-on-ios-7/
They better hurry the heck up with this, my school's iPad roll-out is supposed to happen next week. (UK Sixth Form student here).
 
As a school, I would have delayed the update for at least 60-90 days. At that point, I would upgrade a few iPads to test before making a deployment.

Looks like this IT guy and many others don't know how to rollout software properly/effectively.
 
thats.... not good. how come they advertise so much for schools etc and 'forget' to test this fundamental thing? :confused:
 
herocero said:
Why is an IT admin worth their pay actually rolling out an OS update this soon after release without testing this first?
Click to expand...

That's the first thing I thought. You roll out on a single device, you ensure everything went smoothly and then you roll out to other devices. Somebody failed in their job and they are passing the buck.

I'm not saying that somebody at Apple didn't fail in their job as well. Certainly, Apple QA staff should have tried upgrading with supervision/security profiles installed and ensured they remained on the device after upgrade.

However, just because Apple's QA staff failed it does not recuse these school district IT admins from doing their job. It is their job to verify such upgrades in their specific environments.

----------
stiligFox said:
This ^

I'll give them a little leeway since this is all new, but still!
Click to expand...

It being brand new to many of them is the exact reason they should not be doing things in a free-for-all fashion. You proceed with caution when something is unknown. You make these kind of mistakes when you have repeated experience of things just going smoothly and so you gain a false sense of trust that the next upgrade would just go smoothly as well. The company I work for has yet to verify iOS 7 for enterprise use because it is too new.
 
Two huge issues here, that I have found to be critically large issues in my time both in school and working for a school:
-They rolled out iOS 7 without testing it. They couldn't have tried this with what, 4 iPads and found this issue right away and delayed it until they could proceed further? Or are the students installing iOS 7 on their own to get past that?

-The second, and perhaps more alarming, is the fact that they're collecting the iPads at the end of the day because the iPads could be used to browse different websites, etc. The school sees it as "We don't want our property to be used for this or that" but I guess I see it as these kids can't use their iPads to study after school.

My nephew is in an iPad program at school. They don't hardly use books. Or worksheets. Or even physical sheet music. When they play a concert they all pull up their iPads and play off of that. It's brilliant because these kids are more interested in learning, the learning can be far more interactive, and the iPad actually does save a ton of money in the long run.

If his iPad were taken away for, say, a week from school they would have severe issues. Even if he could use it at school that still means they're going to need to completely change how they do things outside of the school. That transition would probably take all the time it would take to get the protection back up on these devices.

Anyway, the long story shortened: Schools are more afraid of the negative that COULD happen with these devices than with the loss of education that WILL happen without them. Yikes.
 
I think the better question is why is the school setting up policies to "protect children from improper content" instead of teaching proper browsing behavior?

We have become too much of a let the other guy be responsible for it, instead of teaching personal responsibility.

And yes, if they insist on having this in there, the comment by school officials shows a lack of personal responsibility on their part as well, expecting Apple to test it for them.

I do think Apple should have tested this as well, but bottom line is this is yet another pass the buck example. Instead each student should say the buck stops here when it comes to preventing improper content. Then their parents should say the buck stops here. Then the teachers should say it. Then the Principals should say it. Then the school district IT people should say it. Then Apple should say it about not having tested this.

In other words, there should be several layers before it even reaches the district IT people and they should have tested first, then if the tests failed reach out to Apple and ask how to handle it.
 
Well if you are setting up with apple configurator and you are setting up a supervised option it requires you to update to the most current software. So it's ok as long as your already set up but any new setups would be on ios 7.
 
There are hundreds of ios software engineering and testing employees in Cupertino. Apple sends the marketing message that "Apple products just work". The education sector is Apple's lifeblood for growing new users. Underserving it is unprecedented and gives eager competition from Mountain View another crack for a toehold up. Speaking of deleted supervisory rights, perhaps additional adult supervision is needed in ios development beyond color palette.
 
mattjackbrown said:
Well if you are setting up with apple configurator and you are setting up a supervised option it requires you to update to the most current software. So it's ok as long as your already set up but any new setups would be on ios 7.
Click to expand...

We had a couple of teachers try to add apps onto their iOS6 iPads using Configurator and it started downloading and installing iOS7 on them. It turned out they chose "When update is available" for iOS updates.

This of course was a couple days before Apple released the new Configurator.

Sigh...... Yes, it was a huge mess.
 
cmwade77 said:
I think the better question is why is the school setting up policies to "protect children from improper content" instead of teaching proper browsing behavior?

We have become too much of a let the other guy be responsible for it, instead of teaching personal responsibility.

And yes, if they insist on having this in there, the comment by school officials shows a lack of personal responsibility on their part as well, expecting Apple to test it for them.

I do think Apple should have tested this as well, but bottom line is this is yet another pass the buck example. Instead each student should say the buck stops here when it comes to preventing improper content. Then their parents should say the buck stops here. Then the teachers should say it. Then the Principals should say it. Then the school district IT people should say it. Then Apple should say it about not having tested this.

In other words, there should be several layers before it even reaches the district IT people and they should have tested first, then if the tests failed reach out to Apple and ask how to handle it.
Click to expand...

Totally agree with how we should be teaching responsibility, not just taking things away. I fear the day the kids graduate from school and enter the real world. They'll have no idea how to interact with people.

Fortunately, the IT department in my school district is a bit better. They told us to not update until further word.
 
herocero said:
Why is an IT admin worth their pay actually rolling out an OS update this soon after release without testing this first?
Click to expand...

You forget, this is a school. That means the "IT admin" is really the English teacher who has never done anything like this before.

I'm not kidding, none of the people who make the decisions have ever done this before. When budgets get cut they fire support staff first then when they need them back they post a job offer for like $12/hour for a new IT guy. They mostly get what they pay for.

But in the end it will work out. After all some kid gaining access to Facebook is not the end of the world.
 
herocero said:
Why is an IT admin worth their pay actually rolling out an OS update this soon after release without testing this first?
Click to expand...

stiligFox said:
This ^

I'll give them a little leeway since this is all new, but still!
Click to expand...

unplugme71 said:
As a school, I would have delayed the update for at least 60-90 days. At that point, I would upgrade a few iPads to test before making a deployment.

Looks like this IT guy and many others don't know how to rollout software properly/effectively.
Click to expand...

BC2009 said:
That's the first thing I thought. You roll out on a single device, you ensure everything went smoothly and then you roll out to other devices. Somebody failed in their job and they are passing the buck.
Click to expand...

Issue is, the IT guys can't prevent the iOS update.

Reading the posts, the students initiated the update becuase Apple did not block that ability.

The only thing the school IT staff could do was block the URL for the update, but once the iPad was on an open WiFi, then the student could start an update.
(http://mesu.apple.com/assets/com_a...ate/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate.xml)


This is will be a black eye for Apples education initiative.
 
As stated previously...

TEST!

Not only that, if the config is saved you just redeploy it if needed. We did the same with our iPods/iPads when we update software. But first and formost we TEST deploy to see if there are any issues.

No sympathy for these schools as they are in the 'academics' they should have used what they teach in regards to "control" and "test" like in biology and chemistry. Or do they not teach "here's the normal frog and here's the frog we attached laser beams to, let's see if there are any side effects"

Considering some of the teachers I've met, I'm not surprised though and have often a couple "well looks like you guys screwed up"
 
ChrisA said:
You forget, this is a school. That means the "IT admin" is really the English teacher who has never done anything like this before.
Click to expand...

Actually, no it's not like that everywhere. Or maybe I'm just lucky to be in the IT department of the district I'm in.
 
guzhogi said:
Totally agree with how we should be teaching responsibility, not just taking things away. I fear the day the kids graduate from school and enter the real world. They'll have no idea how to interact with people.
Click to expand...

It's happening every year for decades.

It's not so much the kids, but what we teach them, or lack of what we teach them, how to live in society, how to get a job, work ethics, retirement. etc.
 
PracticalMac said:
Issue is, the IT guys can't prevent the iOS update.

Reading the posts, the students initiated the update becuase Apple did not block that ability.

The only thing the school IT staff could do was block the URL for the update, but once the iPad was on an open WiFi, then the student could start an update.
(http://mesu.apple.com/assets/com_a...ate/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate.xml)


This is will be a black eye for Apples education initiative.
Click to expand...

Silly question....the link you posted with the apple xml...what does it do?
 
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