Account and Other Restrictions in a Middle School Environment?

[VT-Vincent]

As we're approaching the end of our second year of a middle school 1-to-1 iPad deployment, I'm taking the opportunity to see what we can change or improve based on the use (and abuse) that the devices have seen. One thing I'm particularly curious about is how other schools manage Apple ID account settings. In our building, we have many students signing out of the App Store, allowing their friends to sign in, then downloading their friends apps on their device. In some cases, I have seen a single device with apps downloaded from 10+ accounts. Obviously this is quite disruptive when you attempt to update or restore an iCloud backup.

Looking at some of the options available, I'm considering preventing account changes based on a smart group with the criteria of "iTunes Store Account is Active." The idea being that once a student sets up their iPad and downloads their first app with the (presumably) correct account, the setting will go into effect and prevent any further account changes. It seems to work well in a controlled test environment, but I'm curious what it would look like on a larger scale.

While on the topic, I'd also be curious to hear what other unique situations you guys have encountered and some of the more creative ways you've found around them!

[brandonusher]

We manage all our Apple ID's ourselves. Because of that, we do not give out the Apple ID password so we prevent modifying the account information. It prevents the students from installing anything that isn't on our District Wide approved list.

[Zeek]

If you are using JAMF you can create a policy to hide app store. You also have to create unique apple id for each one and don't share the password with the kids.

1. Movile Diveces...

[VT-Vincent]

Wow, you manage all of your Apple IDs yourselves? So do you deploy all of your apps through Self Service?

The problem is at least in our deployment, we can't hide the App Store. From class to class, teachers ask their students to download specific apps. Preventing changes to the account once it's sign in would seem to fix our issue, but I'm just wondering if we may run into any unintended consequences down the line.

[brandonusher]

@VT-Vincent We require our teachers to submit help tickets requesting apps for their students. We then assign the apps to the static groups of the teachers students, then instruct the teachers to get the students to open the App Store and Download the app. We had the option of Automatically Download apps on, but since Apple stopped allowing VPP Assignments to be Auto Downloaded, this is our new way.

[Zeek]

We do it the same way.

[cdenesha]

I like the SG criteria of "iTunes Store Account is Active" preventing account changes - that is a cool idea! Has further testing shown any issues?

thanks,

chris