Deployment and Flexibility... how much should we bend?

[bosstone75]

I serve as the special education tech support for a large school district. It's my job to organize the management of about 500 iPads being deployed to Special Education staff and students.

I feel like even through we've been doing it for over a year and a half in Casper that we are still in our infancy stages of deploying iPads. We worked closely with an Apple Engineer and JAMF to get up and running in Casper and created a plan that at the time seemed pretty solid. Now, it's starting to seem like that plan may not be as solid as we thought and I was hoping to get a perspective from someone else deploying iPads to see how we can tweak things to make it more efficient.

Specifically, I have quite a few questions about iPads given out to special education students and staff as they tend to be a bit more "flexible" with their needs then regular education is. It will be helpful for me if when you reply, you let me know whether or not you deal with special education iPads and a relative size of your district.

I'll start right away with the questions for those of you short on time. A bit of background will be below that explaining what our current practices are like.

Our specific questions are…
1) Do you manage free apps in Casper? Our fear is if we start this practice that our app list will become unmanageable.

2) How much freedom/flexibility do you allow for iPads deployed to Special Ed Staff or Students? Is it "you get what you get and you don't have a fit"? Is it anything goes? Or somewhere in between?

3) Do you allow your students or staff to keep their iPads over the summer.

4) We currently do our app assignments under the Users tab first and then we do the app assignment under the Mobile Devices tab so that they show up in Self Service. Is that the way you do that?

5) What about cases? We need to be flexible with students who have unique motor needs, but what about in general? Do you just have one or two styles of cases for folks to choose from (like one keyboard case and one non-keyboard case)? Do you let folks choose whatever case they want as a group? or individually?

To give you a bit of background…
We currently have been deploying iPads primarily in 3 ways.

A group of staff ask for iPads to be assigned to them personally to be used for productivity and to be used one to one with students. (for example, every speech pathologist in our district now has an iPad) We have those staff sign into their iPads with their active directory accounts and then they sign into an iTunes account that THEY manage. When a group requests a set of iPads in this scenario, we ask them to come up with a list of apps that the group wants. We leave the iPads unlocked so they can add their own apps. If an individual wants an app, they get it approved by a supervisor and then we add the app to that individual.

OR

A teacher or a Teaching and Learning Specialists (TALS) creates what we call an innovative grant where they request a group of iPads for a specific purpose. (for example, we have a Social Communication class in each of our high schools. that each got a set of 5 iPads) In this case, we have created fake active directory accounts as well as fake iTunes accounts for each of those iPads based off their Asset Tag number. When the teacher or TALS makes the request for the iPads, we have them identify the apps that they want deployed to the entire group. If an individual wants an additional app, they make that request to a supervisor and we add that app to that individual's group of iPads. We leave the iPads unlocked so they can add their own apps, HOWEVER, we ask that if they add their own free apps, that they sign out of the fake account and sign into any account that they manage and make that "purchase". Our rationale behind this is that these iTunes accounts could end up being used by someone else if the iPad gets deployed to someone else. That "someone else" may sign into that account and assume that everything in the purchase history is good stuff and download it even though it may have been an app that the person was just reviewing and then decided it was garbage. Our rational behind leaving the iPads unlocked is it follows our district's current policy of encouraging innovation by allowing staff to have more control over their devices.

OR

A teacher has one student that they are interested in seeing if an iPad is the correct tool to meet a specific need. (for example, a student who is Blind/VI who needs books read aloud) This works somewhat in the same way as the innovative grant iPads with the caveat that these are trial iPads meaning that they get the iPad to use with the student. We have created fake active directory accounts as well as fake iTunes accounts for each of those iPads based off their Asset Tag number. When the teacher or TALS makes the request for the iPad, we have them identify the apps that they want deployed to that iPad. If they want an additional app, they make that request to a supervisor and we add that app to that individual's iPad. We leave the iPads unlocked so they can add their own apps, HOWEVER, we ask that if they add their own free apps, that they sign out of the fake account and sign into any account that they manage and make that "purchase". Same reasons as above.

We've been questioning some of our practices. If any of what you've read above raises red flags for you. Or you know of a better way to do it, please let us know.

[nigelmarrion]

I lead the 1:1 iPad program in a Catholic High School. Next year will be our 4th year. The first 2 years we used Casper. Last year we switched to AirWatch, but we are just switching back to Casper. (Long story behind this). We use Apple DEP & VPP Managed Distribution for (paid) apps.

1) Do you manage free apps in Casper? Our fear is if we start this practice that our app list will become unmanageable.
All apps that we allow our students to use are in Self-Service. We report, as a discipline matter, students who install any apps directly from the App Store.

2) How much freedom/flexibility do you allow for iPads deployed to Special Ed Staff or Students? Is it "you get what you get and you don't have a fit"? Is it anything goes? Or somewhere in between?
All students, including those with learning disabilities, get the same iPad. The iPads are supervised and have restrictions that such as Facetime & iMessage disabled.
Staff iPads have no restrictions.

3) Do you allow your students or staff to keep their iPads over the summer.
No

4) We currently do our app assignments under the Users tab first and then we do the app assignment under the Mobile Devices tab so that they show up in Self Service. Is that the way you do that?
Use Smartgroups to assign apps. One smartgroup for each grade. One for staff.

5) What about cases? We need to be flexible with students who have unique motor needs, but what about in general? Do you just have one or two styles of cases for folks to choose from (like one keyboard case and one non-keyboard case)? Do you let folks choose whatever case they want as a group? or individually?
Just one case is provided and allowed for students. The first 3 years we used cases from Belkin. Next year we will use a rugged case from maxcases.

[mmcallister]

We are a small K-6 district of about 3000 students. We have a few dozen iPads deployed to Special Ed students. All of our Instructional staff (including Special Ed) have iPads issued to them as well.

1) Do you manage free apps in Casper? Our fear is if we start this practice that our app list will become unmanageable.
Yes, for students. Staff members can install free apps from the App Store as desired.

2) How much freedom/flexibility do you allow for iPads deployed to Special Ed Staff or Students? Is it "you get what you get and you don't have a fit"? Is it anything goes? Or somewhere in between?
Somewhere in between. Special Ed students have a different set of apps deployed to them via VPP assignments than do the rest of the student body. Staff can download any free app.

3) Do you allow your students or staff to keep their iPads over the summer.
Staff yes, students no.

4) We currently do our app assignments under the Users tab first and then we do the app assignment under the Mobile Devices tab so that they show up in Self Service. Is that the way you do that?
For 2014-15 we only did the VPP assignments, and downloaded apps on the device. For 15-16 we will additionally push app content from the Mobile Devices tab for our core apps, with the rest being available in the App Store.

5) What about cases? We need to be flexible with students who have unique motor needs, but what about in general? Do you just have one or two styles of cases for folks to choose from (like one keyboard case and one non-keyboard case)? Do you let folks choose whatever case they want as a group? or individually?
We bought cases in bulk, so you get what you get.

[kmccann]

We are K-12 school district in southeastern Pennsylvania. Our high school of 1250 students is 1:1 iPad. Our Middle School has 10 carts of 25 iPads and each of our four elementary school has 1 cart of 25 iPads. Every teacher has an iPad.

High School student iPads are supervised and DEP enrolled, authenticated to the student LDAP user account. Personal iTunes account.

1) Do you manage free apps in Casper? Our fear is if we start this practice that our app list will become unmanageable. Yes, for high school students. It is much easier for a teacher send the students to Self Service to get a specific app, rather then let them loose in the distractions of the App Store. I scope Apps to LDAP groups that contain the target students. (ie. Read180 app group contains all students that should download the Read180 app.) If a high school student wants a note taking application, they choose what works best for him/her and download from the apps store. Those types of apps are not in Casper. For shared iPads in our middle school and elementary school, we use sync stations and push apps through configurator. There is no apple ID on the shared iPads, the apple ID is on the itunes account in the sync station assigned to the cart that houses the iPads. Teachers request apps (even free apps for installation). Paid apps on the shared carts are bought through VPP and we use the spreadsheet format through configurator.

2) How much freedom/flexibility do you allow for iPads deployed to Special Ed Staff or Students? Is it "you get what you get and you don't have a fit"? Is it anything goes? Or somewhere in between? We try to meet the needs of the users. The technology organization is a customer support role, and if we didn't have staff and students, we wouldn't have a job. (Doesn't mean we don't whine about it in the background). There is no one size fits all for any user.

3) Do you allow your students or staff to keep their iPads over the summer. Yes, both students and teachers keep their iPads over the summer. We don't have secure space to store 1250 iPads.

5) What about cases? We need to be flexible with students who have unique motor needs, but what about in general? Do you just have one or two styles of cases for folks to choose from (like one keyboard case and one non-keyboard case)? Do you let folks choose whatever case they want as a group? or individually? Our policy says that the iPad must be in a case at all times and give them inexpensive covers to all (5 Below). The student/teacher can choose to change the case to something they purchase.

Hope this helps you out.