After our Lion Server upgrade and a (probably) lengthy discussion with one of Toucan’s finest engineers this coming Monday, I’m planning on ordering iPads for our school. We’re going for some class sets of 6 for Year 5 & 6 classes and then smaller class sets for Reception and Nursery. However, the issue still remains of how we’re going to manage them, particularly regarding AppleIDs. Here’s a solution I’m now considering…
Class iCloud accounts
Because we’re not going for complete class sets of iPads, sharing one AppleID and iCloud account may well work for each class set
- Set up an AppleID and iCloud for each class set, with a catchy name like myschoolyear5ipads2@me.com or something.
- Set aside money in the budget to pay for full licensing of apps once the Volume Purchase Programme comes to the UK. Not ideal, but neither are the alternatives.
- Turn on automatic downloads of new apps on each iPad in the class, plus on the teacher’s iTunes on their Mac. This makes adding new (free) apps on the class set super easy!
- Turn on documents in the cloud and iCloud backup. This means that children can pick up any iPad and their documents will be there. Hopefully won’t result in horrible syncing issues.
- Setup the same me.com email on every iPad. Teachers can then email the whole class set at once.
- Turn off photostream – pity needs to be shown for our wireless network!
Or something. What are the potential issues with this idea?
Primary ICT 