App Store in a 1:1 Environment

[jonathan_massey]

We are a public K-12 environment with 8000-9000 mobile devices deployed across all grade levels. We have restricted the App Store on all student devices except for our high school. We are contemplating removing it from there as well and I was wondering if any of you guys out there had done the same and how it has impacted your learning environments either positively or negatively. Any feedback you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

[bvondeylen]

From the get go we have not allowed the App Store in our environment for students. We do allow the app store for staff.

It has been a positive, especially if you want to build up your own set of apps using VPP.

Our staff need to submit requests for app (free are just submitted, paid require an account number). I do ask staff for categories they would like their app submission to be under.

We have 3,500+ iOS devices and currently around 800 apps in self service. Of course with jamf convoluted way of distributing these apps it appears we have over 1,500 apps since many are doubled in jamf (one of PUSH and the other for Self Service).

I would NOT go back to allowing students access to app store.

[blackholemac]

Second @bvondeylen ...we allow it for staff but not for students. According to our teaching staff, the first year (when we had it open), it was more than a nuisance...kids filled their iPads with games and couldn't work properly. As such the following year we closed it and two years later, we went to device assignment.

[boberito]

The school I used to work was like 600ish students, maybe 100 iOS, 500 macOS. We blocked the App Store on iOS but allowed it on macOS. The iOS devices were in the hands of younger kids. The macOS were middle school and up.

I feel as though it was good to block on 5th grade and lower due to the fact that on iOS it's everything. If I had to do it again, I may consider blocking on macOS too. It turns out that even without admin access there are some VPN apps and things like that which students discovered.

We distributed all App Store based things via Device VPP or whatever it's exactly called.

[bumbletech]

You can have a block/allow list for specific apps via configuration profile. Device-based VPP's pretty great, but there can be a delay in big environments and if a developer pulled an app, you can't download it again like you can from an AppleID.

[jonathan_massey]

We still use device based app assignments to our students, but its the constant stream of blacklisting apps and the fallout of a campus where students are allowed to simply download and play games whenever they feel like it. We have pushed back with "this is classroom monitoring issue" but it has become increasingly obvious that its simply too much for a single teacher to constantly deal with, not to mention the space issue on the devices themselves.

[cdenesha]

We are moving away from allowing the App Store on high school 1:1 iPads. It becomes a gaming and social media device instead of an educational one. We are doing it slowly a year at a time and the teachers for grade 9 can see the difference.