We have a great 1:1 program at my school. In grades 4-12 every student (and all faculty) have a 13″ Macbook Pro with a 500GB backup drive along with a suite of software we’ve installed for productivity, content creation and organization. Not only does each student have this powerful learning tool, they are also administrators on their own machines so they can install all though things that we forgot and they want.
We thought long and hard about how were would deliver software to our users and use JAMF’s Casper Self Service tool to do the job. We have been very happy with the suite of tools JAMF provides and have even started using their mobile device management (MDM) platform to start deploying app to our iPads.
It was the iPads that got me first thinking about the AppleID. As we begin to explore and pilot different management options for a possible iPad deployment one big issue is that ALL apps for the iPad have to be installed via the App Store and by no other mean.
Since we weren’t going to be moving to quickly on our iPad testing with student I thought we had some time to spend with this issue, I was wrong…
We use Evernote… a lot. It has been one of the best tools we’ve included in our 1:1 program and has had a big impact of student learning and collaborator.
With any tool you need to some troubleshoot and part of that troubleshoot sometime require that you reinstall the software of the device you are using. Evernote now appears to only be available for download from the Apple App Store.
PROBLEM!
How do you have a student in fourth, fifth, sixth and maybe even seventh grade download an application from the App Store when the minimum age for setting up and account is 13 years old?
COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) now is coming in the way of downloading applications that could have no other connection to what the Rule covers then the fact that it must now be downloaded from the store.
Now… I have some really smart people that I work with that could figure out how to get an app from the App Store and make it available to everyone. We could download the app logged in as an admins using a school account to get the need app there, but that’s not the point.
One of the things that we have tried to do in our 1:1 program is to teach people how to be self-sufficient, to handle their own problems and issues… to be their own tech support. It’s issue like this that make the management of any 1:1 program that much more difficult. As things get easier with the availability of apps from the App Store they get more complicated when COPPA is in the mix.
We’re going to the drawing board to work through this issue… what are you doing?
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For my 9 year old I just had the same issue. I didn’t want her downloading anything for her new ipod but also didn’t want to put her on my account. I endedup making her an account but keeping the password. for now she has to come to me to download something. When she is ready to control her own account I will give her the password. There will be no issues about what she buys over the next few years since it will be on her account. I’m not sure if this idea will work for school.
On of my biggest concerns would be creating an AppleID for a student that may end up being something that have with the for the rest of their “life”. I don’t know what the options would be for our school and school’s in general as they move in this direction.
I am just now learning about Apple Configurator. Can’t you use that to manage the apps? I realize that this is an older post, and perhaps you are already hip to this …
Yes you can… however tools like JAMF Casper allow you to manage you license code much easier than Configurator.
Looking for a solution for 2nd graders. We will have 1:1 iPads for about 70 students and were discussing a generic AppleID for us 3 teachers to easily sync student devices with the apps we want them to use. But, how many iPads can be linked/synced to 1 AppleID? Could we do 70 to one AppleID (students would not know the password)? If not, can a single teacher sync 20+ devices to an account? Looking for solutions. I read, ” Now… I have some really smart people that I work with that could
figure out how to get an app from the App Store and make it available
to everyone. We could download the app logged in as an admins using a
school account to get the need app there, but that’s not the point.” but am not sure if we are talking about the same thing.