How can parents monitor their kids iOS Devices at home with a management profile from school

[Lucasder]

So we are slowly running into this issue with our parents in grades 3-5. The students own their iPads but they are supervised and go thru DEP(this is a lease to own model). Once enrolled we use apple classroom for our teachers to monitor them. The issue we run into is this
When you put a students iPad into a class via JAMF Pro you cannot use the apple classroom app as a parent, not part of JAMF PRO, to make a class of your own to then monitor them. you also cannot use most monitoring devices or apps because they require the use of a management profile on the device and there can only be on management profile.
If the students iPad is not in the class on JAMF Pro, you can use the apple classroom app to make your own class at home and then monitor them while they do their homework
Has anyone run into this issue where a parent wants to monitor their child at home but does not have a way to because of our management profile on the device. Thanks for your help

[Chris_Hafner]

I'll jump on to say first, my comment will likely NOT help solve your problem, at least from a technical standpoint. As you've mentioned, any other management/monitoring system will require its own management profile and that's not going to work for you. (FYI, my favorite at home management/monitoring system, as a parent of a pre-teen and early teen, is Qustodio).

While I find that while classroom management and monitoring tools really do help manage a whole class of students they tend to hurt the process at home. Parents NEED to physically spend time working with their kids and their technology. It's also the only real way to know what they're up to so as to offer proper guidance. I have no idea what apps, or sites you allow, block or monitor. Are the parents in question looking for something specific, perhaps there are some solutions to some issues?

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That said, as an IT specialist working in Education, I've always given the following parental/technology advice even when parents can do whatever they like technologically.

•) Monitoring children's technology/internet use works best when the parent is looking at and listening to what their students are, in person. My children have to use their computers, tablets, phones in the common areas of our home. Electronics are not allowed in bedrooms/bathrooms unless specifically requested and allowed (Almost never happens)

•) Limiting access to technology during inappropriate times is as easy as physically taking the device away.

•) Technology can be both a tool and a distraction. You (Parent) need to understand that balance. Simply looking at a monitoring app that says your student was on YouTube does not indicate HOW they were using it. Also, services/apps like YouTube cannot be easily classified as good or bad. You generally cannot tell if they are watching their class assigned video, or the latest YouTuber meme unless you're looking at it. If you're looking at their screens via a management app, why aren't you looking in person? Don't be a creep to your kids. They will learn that it's OK/Expected behavior to remotely spy on subordinates.

•) Sometimes blocking things can create unnecessary resentment/sneakiness when it's a great opportunity to talk about why something is appropriate or not, and the how/why of it. I use Qustodio.com to monitor our families overall technology use as opposed to managing it directly. I could block all the bad apps I don't want my son using, but he will figure it out on some other device that I'm not managing and he would have NO guidance. (I do block known explicit (porn) or other violent web content.)

[bdelamarche]

Hi

Qustodio seems to be an excellent application however it is in conflict with the MDM layer of supervised devices.
Do you have a work around?

Thanks Benoit

[Chris_Hafner]

Unfortunately, no. So far as I know, you get one and only one MDM at a time. Qustodio and the others are really just MDM providers. You can't even have JAMF Now and JAMF Pro managing the same iOS device.

[Emmert]

I've got a few parents using Disney's "Circle" product, which is basically a hardware content filter.

I'm not sure how the monitoring/dashboard works, but it's something and it's device agnostic of course.

[Chris_Hafner]

Ahh neat... Yep, there are really creative proxy/firewall systems out there. I hadn't known about Circle.

[Chris_Hafner]

I hadn't thought of these because they usually don't allow any direct monitoring of the device itself, but are able to block/monitor what they visit online.

FYI< They have another product called Circle Go... which IS MDM.

[mm2270]

Hey fellas, thanks for mentioning both Qustodio and Circle! I'm looking into something that will help with general time constraints and monitoring and one of these will likely be the ticket.
Circle seems easier in general to set up, but it's hard to say right now how comprehensive or granular the controls are.
Although Qustodio seems more in depth, I've not seen many good reviews of it online, especially around support.
@Chris_Hafner not sure what you're experience is on that front with Qustodio, but would love to hear about it. Maybe offline if you don't want to get into anything lengthy on this thread.
Anyway, good options to look at.

[Nmiller]

I use Circle with my family at home to help manage our overall usage. Even includes my school managed devices without causing any problems! Happy to answer any specific questions, either a technical or personal.

[Chris_Hafner]

@mm2270 I'm always happy to talk. If we get that personal we can take this offline. Besides, it would be fun to catch up with you anyways as I've kind of kept to myself in the middle of NH lately. In any event, I began using Qustodio when my son got an Android phone a few years back. Suddenly I wanted a little more power over it that than JAMFNow was designed to provide. Also, he was younger and having a smartphone was a pretty questionable thing anyways so I got a bit more elaborate. Qustodio was completely cross-platform (Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows). This covered anything that I'd have in the house that the kids used. I think the features were great and it was inexpensive and reliable.

Now that my son is getting older (heading to HS) AND has moved onto an iPhone 6 when his Samsung got a little too close to water, I think I may change back. Qustodio and other parental MDMs are more restricted on iOS for a variety of privacy reasons that I completely agree with. FYI, just give up on getting your kid's text messages from an iOS device, and at his age, I only restrict certain internet content (mostly so there's a less likely chance that he will end up with bad search results). I now only occasionally monitor his usage so I can talk to him about it later and in person.

I'm always happy to talk specifics or even do a screen share with my Qustodio account (@mm2270) so you can see how it works. There are ups and downs... and I've never even contemplated calling support. I read those reviews too. Never bothered me. That said, I may be giving Circle a more solid look as my daughter nears smartphone age. I actually preferred JAMFNow to manager her iPad over Qustodio. That's a pretty easy one to say as we've always watched her usage in person where my son was old enough that we didn't stand over his shoulders.

To your specific questions... blocking communication or apps based on time is trivially easy with Qustodio and it works VERY well.

[mm2270]

Thanks @Nmiller and @Chris_Hafner!
I think my main question on both of these products is around the granularity of the app specific time limits. For example, I can't necessarily tell for sure from info on either product if I can, for example, limit an app (ex: YouTube) to a total amount of time per day, say 2 hours. Does that mean only for a 2 hour stretch (10 am - 12 noon) or just a total of 2 hours, whether it's 10 minutes in the AM, 30 minutes in the afternoon and the rest in the evening, etc, or any other combination. I'm hoping these work in the latter way, since I don't see a value in just limiting an applications usage for a set period of consecutive hours. That would seem arbitrary and not terribly useful.
it looks like Qustodio can do this from what I can see. I have a trial account set up, just need to activate it and try it out. For Circle, I can't tell for sure if it does this, but it may also work that way. The information on line seems more like marketing videos than actual documentation though.

The reason I'm looking into this is my 10 yr old son has an iPad, and he's getting a bit obsessed with certain game apps. I want to allow him to use them of course, but we're not liking how much time he's spending in them, and, while we do set limits and tell him it's time to get off it, and enforce that, having something that can actually track it more accurately and simply stop it when the time is up will help us keep in under control easier. Some web filtering will also come in handy, but it's not as much of a concern for us.... yet. I'll be glad to have that for when we need it though.

[Chris_Hafner]

Ahhh... easy answer. Yes to both, at least for Qustodio. You can set time limits for:

•) Usage Schedule: This means you can set the device to be enabled/disabled daily. You can schedule each day in 1-hour increments.

•) Time Allowance-General: You can set a maximum overall usage time for each day of the week (i.e. 1 hour on Monday, none on Tuesday and 2 hours on Saturday)

•) Time Allowance by Application: Like the general time allowance, this allows you to set maximum usage time by app. You can set time limits for ALL apps individually. This way you can also have apps that have no limit.

[mm2270]

Great! That's exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks for the details @Chris_Hafner !
Time to give it a spin.

[Nmiller]

@mm2270 You can set time limits for certain apps within Circle. You can also set limits for certain categories of apps (gaming, entertainment, education, music, etc), which is helpful when they download a new app. You can also set an OffTime within your profile. This is helpful if you have activities at certain times. There is also a separate control for BedTime.

All time limits happen through the profiles you create. I have a profile for individual kids and then a separate one for the common devices. That way they can't just move from one to the other. And if kid #1 uses all the time on the common devices, I can easily add more time for kid #2 (after a discussion of course).