Apple Classroom without Apple School Manager?

unsoluble
New Contributor

Hi there,

We're going to have a set of 30 new iPads this fall, managed by our IT department (with JAMF). I'm going to be teaching with these, with all 450 students in the school, one class per hour.

So they're going to be shared iPads, but: Our district isn't currently willing to support Apple School Manager.

Wondering: Will I still be able to use Apple Classroom, to do all of the local control / distribution / monitoring stuff, without the ASM backend? Can I just assign device names instead of student names? Or will Classroom simply not work in this scenario?

I know I won't be able to do the true Shared iPad stuff, with the logging in and out and such, but would like to at least have the screen management stuff working...

Thanks!

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

m_donovan
Contributor III

We are also not using ASM as we don't have the hardware to do shared iPads. However, we are able to use Apple classroom with our cart based iPads. You can enable Apple education Support without enabling ASM. Once that is done you will need to create a set of users for the devices (i.e. 1-MathCartA, 2-MathCartB, etc.). The name with the number first is important as the teacher will only see the first 5 or 6 characters of the name. You then assign the new users to the devices in the cart (Device 1 to User 1 etc.). I then put the users into a student group but you could just add them individually to a class. Create a class and assign the group or the students and at least one teacher. We always add the campus tech as a teacher just in case. The teacher iPad is the only one that needs Apple Classroom app installed and must have any app you want to use with the students installed. The teacher iPad must be assigned to the teacher in the JSS as well. Feel free to email me at mike.donovan@killeenisd.org if you have any other questions. Your TAM should also be able to help with the process.

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5 REPLIES 5

m_donovan
Contributor III

We are also not using ASM as we don't have the hardware to do shared iPads. However, we are able to use Apple classroom with our cart based iPads. You can enable Apple education Support without enabling ASM. Once that is done you will need to create a set of users for the devices (i.e. 1-MathCartA, 2-MathCartB, etc.). The name with the number first is important as the teacher will only see the first 5 or 6 characters of the name. You then assign the new users to the devices in the cart (Device 1 to User 1 etc.). I then put the users into a student group but you could just add them individually to a class. Create a class and assign the group or the students and at least one teacher. We always add the campus tech as a teacher just in case. The teacher iPad is the only one that needs Apple Classroom app installed and must have any app you want to use with the students installed. The teacher iPad must be assigned to the teacher in the JSS as well. Feel free to email me at mike.donovan@killeenisd.org if you have any other questions. Your TAM should also be able to help with the process.

MattAebly
Contributor II
Contributor II

It's also important to remember that if these are Shared iPads, the devices themselves must be scoped to the class. That's the only way Shared iPads get the EDU profile. I'd recommend putting the shared iPads into a mobile device group and then scoping that mobile device group to the class.

Also, Shared iPads need to have Managed Apple IDs to log in, so do you have those set up with Apple School Manager?

EDIT: Saw it's not a true Shared iPad setup. Disregard.

unsoluble
New Contributor

Thanks for the info, guys — much appreciated! Mike, I'll probably take you up on that offer at some point; I'll be trying to walk my district IT folks through setting this up for me, which I'm sure is going to be a joyful experience for everyone. :)

jamf_sam
Moderator
Moderator

Hey @unsoluble, our Systems Engineer @Kelly.Conrad wrote this neat guide that should have all the information you need! Troubleshooting the education golden triangle: Classroom, Apple School Manager and Shared iPad It specifically talks about not needing Apple School Manager for some aspects.

unsoluble
New Contributor

Oooo, that’s awesome. Many thanks!