NWEA MAP App

[danny33c]

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone else uses NWEA Map testing on iPads and what your experience has been. We've sent the app out to the device, not through VPP, and are having some issues. When kids start the test, maybe 21-24 per class, approximately half of them may or may not get bumped out of the test. We have a pretty robust Cisco wireless network, and we do run the student iPads through a proxy, but in my experience apps either work through the proxy or not, there's no in between. The techs at NWEA say everything is great on their end. Anyway, if you stumble across this post and have the same issues, let me know. There's no place out there for NWEA/iPad districts to commiserate about their experiences. I've seen a few older JAMF nation posts regarding NWEA Map testing, please let me know your experience good or bad.

Thanks,
Dan

[St0rMl0rD]

Hi Dan,

We had our first MAP testings on iPads this year (67 devices), and it went without a hitch. The way we set it up was:

• the iPads used for testing were put in a static group MAP_TESTING
• a specific Wi-Fi network was set up just for testing
• once the iPads had the Wi-Fi testing profile on them, we removed access to the regular network
• we pushed out the NWEA MAP testing app onto those devices
• we deployed a configuration profile that configures the home screen layout and only allows the Settings, Safari and NWEA MAP apps to be on the home screen
• we enabled Guided Access on every single iPad and used the same code for all the devices - the code was only known to invigilators
• that's it :)

Went without a hitch. While the MAP app still has a long way to go, it was a very successful start.

[JayDuff]

We are looking at giving MAP via iPads this season. @St0rMl0rD 's method sounds comprehensive, but labor intensive.

We will be allowing teachers to test whenever they please. So, locking down every device in the school for the 3 week window is probably not gonna fly.

I was thinking Apple Classroom might be a REALLY good way to lock the students into the app. We could push the Config Profile that disables spell check and predictive text, etc and the students could live with it, as long as they can get into their other apps when they aren't testing.

Anyone else try this method?

[danny33c]

A lot of teachers used Apple Classroom to view the students, not all of them used Apple Classroom to lock them down. Most of them found it wasn't necessary since you can view the progress on the dashboard and use Apple Classroom to view the iPads from their desk.

[mattlee06]

I know this is an older post, but thought I'd throw this out there.

With the 10.2 update, Apple wants you to use https with any PAC file deployed to the iPads. When we had 10.2 iPads going though a http linked PAC file, we got a white screen in NWEA MAPS, changing that to a secure connection allowed the app to work as expected.

We also don't require teachers to lockdown- as with @danny33c 's comment - monitoring via Classroom seems to be enough.