[ipad] Starting from scratch

[TheMrB]

Hey guys.

 

We've just had a teacher in asking about setting up classrooms full of iPads, with the intention of getting them in in the next year or so.

Now, our network and our set up in general is pretty antiquated and I have no idea if it is a feasible solution in our place.

 

Does anyone know of a literal "Beginners guide" for this kind of set up? We are absolutely clueless as to what we would need etc to make this solution work and I would really like to get a head start so that I can go to the NM with a workable solution when this plan becomes a reality.

 

Cheers in advance for any help.

[Norphy]

The first question has to be, what infrastructure do you have in place at the moment? Wired, wireless, everything.

[tmcd35]

The right solution depends on a number of question, including...

 

Type of school?

Size of school?

Are they only going to be used in the one classroom?

How many iPads are you looking at?

How many in one classroom?

Will you buy more at a later date/expand the system?

 

If you are looking at more than a couple of classrooms and/or want full roaming around the site then you'll want a wireless survey done. Find 3 or 4 reputable companies and ask them to survey they site and offer quotes. Try to get them to quote on more than one technology (Muru, Ruckus, etc).

 

There's also the management of the iPads to consider. So iPad trollies, charging, Mobile Device Management software, iTunes volume license accounts. Companies like Insight can help advise here on a complete solution and help install/set up.

 

Edit: Go to the NM now! Involve him/her as early as possible. They are paid to come up with the majority of the answers you are looking for! They'll also have the expertese to ask the right questions and now roughly were to look for answers.

Edited May 20, 2014 by tmcd35

[TheMrB]

Cheers for the replies guys.

Answers as follows:

 

We are a large, 3 building secondary school with around 2000 people (staff and students) on site.

For now, the idea will be probably 30 iPads, for one department. Probably one full class at a time.

 

I would certainly guess that at a later date we would look at expanding the provision depending on how successful a roll-out we have. It's certainly the way forward and if it's successful, why wouldn't we?

In the future I would guess that roaming would be a consideration, be we have a pretty good Meru setup on site that covers all but the darkest corners of the site.

 

Management was probably one of my biggest concerns, mentioned were trolleys for charging etc, but outside of personal use, I am relatively clueless as to what is required for software management. Thanks for the company recommendation, I will give them a buzz.

 

 

Edit: Go to the NM now! Involve him/her as early as possible. They are paid to come up with the majority of the answers you are looking for! They'll also have the expertese to ask the right questions and now roughly were to look for answers.

I am the NM's deputy. And when it comes to new tech, he will always, 100% of the time, come to me for these things.

I know asking on a forum makes me seem completely clueless. My thought was that someone who has had experience with this kind of deployment would be able to point me in the right direction instead of me having to filter through the mass of useless and outdated posts if I dig through google searches.

[Norphy]

I know asking on a forum makes me seem completely clueless.

 

No, it doesn't. It makes you seem like you're asking a question about something that you don't know the answer to. No-one knows everything. I'm certain that you know more about some areas than I do but at the same time I'm also sure that the opposite is true as well. Asking for help, opinions and experiences is nothing to be ashamed of, precisely the opposite in fact.

 

If you have blanket wireless coverage already, you're part of the way there already. How does it cope with that number of laptops in the same area? If it copes OK, you should be alright with iPads as well. The things that you need to look at are as tmcd35 said: Management, volume licensing, MDMs, trolleys, charging etc.

[tmcd35]

We are a large, 3 building secondary school with around 2000 people (staff and students) on site.

For now, the idea will be probably 30 iPads, for one department. Probably one full class at a time.

 

I would certainly guess that at a later date we would look at expanding the provision depending on how successful a roll-out we have.

 

Based on this, a trial. I'd keep is small and simple to start off then. Something like a single trolley with power and syncing capabilities. A Mac Mini for iTunes and Configurator (MDM) perminantly on top the trolley. A single Airport Extreme on the trolley to be plugged into a local network port when the trolley is wheeled into the class room. Give it it's own unique SSID and attach the iPads to that. Possibly even include a USB printer plugged into the Airport for Airprint. Only other thing to look at would be either Google Drive or setting up a webserver with WebDAV to access network drives.

 

 

I am the NM's deputy. And when it comes to new tech, he will always, 100% of the time, come to me for these things..

 

My apologies. I may have come off a little obtuse. We do get the odd teacher/HoD asking this type of question...

[TheMrB]

Based on this, a trial. I'd keep is small and simple to start off then. Something like a single trolley with power and syncing capabilities. A Mac Mini for iTunes and Configurator (MDM) perminantly on top the trolley. A single Airport Extreme on the trolley to be plugged into a local network port when the trolley is wheeled into the class room. Give it it's own unique SSID and attach the iPads to that. Possibly even include a USB printer plugged into the Airport for Airprint. Only other thing to look at would be either Google Drive or setting up a webserver with WebDAV to access network drives.[/Quote]

 

That's perfect, thanks.

One follow up question, hopefully not too complicated.

 

If we decide to expand, let's say 2 full classroom's worth per department, 7/8 departments, would that then require a locally set up Airport per trolley?

Is it something that can be managed centrally using a second channel/SSID on our wireless controller with a Mac (I assume management can only be run from a Mac, man I wish I could install OSX virtually!) in the office?

 

My apologies. I may have come off a little obtuse. We do get the odd teacher/HoD asking this type of question...

Apologies both ways I guess, reading back my reply that was very "Don't you know who I am" of me.

Sorry

 

Thanks both for all the help. I can definitely put something together in preparation now.

Much obliged.

[tmcd35]

.

 

If we decide to expand, let's say 2 full classroom's worth per department, 7/8 departments, would that then require a locally set up Airport per trolley?

 

No, think of that as a cheap trial. Don't want to spend £10,000's on managed wifi if you're not going to use. If you want to scale up to that level you'll be looking at getting serious quotes for a full managed wifi installation. I wouldn't attempt it on anything less - world of pain.

 

Is it something that can be managed centrally using a second channel/SSID on our wireless controller with a Mac (I assume management can only be run from a Mac, man I wish I could install OSX virtually!) in the office?

 

When you scale up you'd relocate the Mac Mini to your server room and centrally manage from there. If you're looking 7/8 departments each with 60 iPads - that's 480 devices! I think you'll be looking at a much stronger MDM solution than Apple Configurator

[TheMrB]

Yeah, maybe close to 500 devices is a bit of an overshot!

I'm just speaking from experiences that I'm sure sure we've all had of teachers going "I WANT THAT!"

 

Do you use a system like this? are there ever any security concerns?

 

Thanks again

[tmcd35]

Do you use a system like this? are there ever any security concerns?

 

Not currently, but have been heavily researching and running small scale trials for a while. Our local primary has a trolley that we are in the process of perfecting it's setup. We're still discussing at a senior leadership level what this school want to be doing long term for ICT.

[TheMrB]

Not currently, but have been heavily researching and running small scale trials for a while. Our local primary has a trolley that we are in the process of perfecting it's setup. We're still discussing at a senior leadership level what this school want to be doing long term for ICT.

 

I'd be really interested to hear how it all pans out.

Just mentioned it to the NM and was greeted with a torrent of loud abuse and spit because he doesn't like the idea!

 

It's gonna be a fun few months I reckon.

 

Cheers for all your help mate, I really appreciate it.

[Norphy]

Just mentioned it to the NM and was greeted with a torrent of loud abuse and spit because he doesn't like the idea!

 

 

Do we have the same boss?

 

Seriously, I don't disagree with anything that tmcd35 has said. The only thing I might suggest is to gauge how serious they are about using iPads or similar devices in the long term and how likely they are to expand the usage of them. It's all very well getting in 30 devices now and using Profile Manager or Apple Configurator to manage them but you may find that these tools become impractical as numbers expand. It may be worth looking at more comprehensive MDM solutions such as Meraki or Lightspeed as I can only imaging how annoying it would be to get people used to one management system, find out it's inadequate as your numbers expand then being forced to move to another.

[TheMrB]

Do we have the same boss?

 

Seriously, I don't disagree with anything that tmcd35 has said. The only thing I might suggest is to gauge how serious they are about using iPads or similar devices in the long term and how likely they are to expand the usage of them. It's all very well getting in 30 devices now and using Profile Manager or Apple Configurator to manage them but you may find that these tools become impractical as numbers expand. It may be worth looking at more comprehensive MDM solutions such as Meraki or Lightspeed as I can only imaging how annoying it would be to get people used to one management system, find out it's inadequate as your numbers expand then being forced to move to another.

 

Cheers,

Yeah, I am thinking that expansion is likely. We have another department looking at getting Learnpads in (it's awesome that I didn't know that until 15 minutes ago!) so I'm guessing that more devices will be guaranteed if it works.

 

At the end of the day, I'll need to put something comprehensive together to cover both eventualities I guess.

If they want to test with a few (I reckon 30 is too many and too expensive to test with) then all but the airport from tmcd35's suggestion would be used upon expansion. But I will do my damnedest to make sure that they know the cost of a full blown MDM is known if they decide to expand.

 

Thanks to you both. I didn't think this was going to be such a minefield!

[Jamman960]

I've been looking at this sort of thing on and off for ages ready for the day pigs start flying and someone here decides to spend some money on IT

 

My biggest concern is that iPad's/non windows tablets in general aren't geared up to be shared so we'd end up being unable to track pupil web activity and have students logging into each others online accounts once someone ticks the "remember me"/"stay logged in" box, all of the things we've spent ages setting up windows networks with AD logins for.

 

I'm visiting a school tomorrow to see their iPad deployment in action, at the moment I'm thinking we should get Dell Venue 11 Pro's for shared use but thats probably just me sticking with what I know best

[TheMrB]

I've been looking at this sort of thing on and off for ages ready for the day pigs start flying and someone here decides to spend some money on IT

 

My biggest concern is that iPad's/non windows tablets in general aren't geared up to be shared so we'd end up being unable to track pupil web activity and have students logging into each others online accounts once someone ticks the "remember me"/"stay logged in" box, all of the things we've spent ages setting up windows networks with AD logins for.

 

I'm visiting a school tomorrow to see their iPad deployment in action, at the moment I'm thinking we should get Dell Venue 11 Pro's for shared use but thats probably just me sticking with what I know best

 

Would love to hear your thoughts when you return!

 

I think, for us, the web activity tracking isn't too much of a problem.

We use a Sophos hardware web app that is set up to ask for a domain log on to access the internet if access is attempted from a non-domain machine.

How that would work with the iPad's need to connect online with it's apps, I don't know.

 

So far my biggest concerns seem to be:

 

Secure access to users home folders

Making sure that students can't install their own apps (Pretty sure that's covered by management software, and

making sure I can manage and configure, on a larger scale, via our already installed Meru solution.

 

I really don't want to be spending money replacing a new wireless solution if I don't have to!

Edited May 20, 2014 by TheMrB

[Shadow_Walker]

We have just purchased about 30 iPad’s for the school I work at so hopefully I can share some problems we have come across. So you have the initial up front cost of the iPads which is a lot of money. If you are looking to buy iPad's then I would recommend KRCS https://www.krcs.co.uk/ and try to speak to Glyn as he was very helpful. You will need to also look at investing in an iPad trolley to keep them charged and locked away safely.

 

However after you have bought everything you start to run into problems, you need to buy apps from the Apple education store but these apps are not cheap even when you start buying in bulk. The school will also need a credit card to purchase apps from the app store which can cause more problems. To get the ilife and iwork apps you will need to fill in this form Volume Purchase Program: Requesting free iLife and iWork apps and send it off to get these apps for free as they don’t come preinstalled on the iPad. You need to supervise the iPad’s which we do using apple configurator and using lightspeed mdm to manage them wirelessly however you can use Maraki which is an alternative https://meraki.cisco.com/products/systems-manager.

 

Then you have the problem of the pupils saving work, if a pupil does work on iPad 1 it means that the work is saved onto that iPad alone and any other pupil could delete that work or modify it. You have ways round this e.g. dropbox and onedrive but at the place I work at we didn’t want to go down these paths mainly as we didn’t want pupils work saved away from our internal server. There are two alternatives which I know of which save work back to the server but it adds more money onto the already high bill. The two options are foldr Foldr | Remote File Access From Any Device & Workflow Solution For iOS from Minnow IT and aircatch AirCatch, both work very well in my opinion but foldr works slightly better as it uses the pupils usernames and password to log them into the software to save work.

 

I don’t know if this will help but these are the problems we have come across over the last month.

[SovietRussia]

Secure access to users home folders

Making sure that students can't install their own apps (Pretty sure that's covered by management software, and

making sure I can manage and configure, on a larger scale, via our already installed Meru solution.

 

There is no native support for SMB, theres not really native support for WebDav so accessing User Home Folders has to be done via the web browser using something like HAP+, but then Safari has further restrictions on what files it can download to the iPad (iPads have no file system, its all per app sandboxing). And uploading to Safari is even worse, you can ONLY upload a picture or a video, so any work done in Pages etc has to be pushed via WebDav which is now, coming to the end of its life as its so insecure - but then, all apps may not support WebDav so you begin juggling ways to store files.

 

You can disable the App Store which is all good, disable removal of apps, disable installation of profiles from another source, disable Facetime and Siri etc

 

To be managing and configuring on a large scale, you need to have definetly a OTA MDM solution, its all well and fine Supervising the devices using Configurator but for the day to day management of App Pushes, restriction changes etc its much easier to be done OTA. Recommend Meraki really as its free, but it isn't perfect, I have not yet found one MDM solution that is 100% perfect and will do everything you ask of it, this is partly down to Apple and the restrictions it places on 3rd party MDM solutions (You can get much more management features with Profile Manager, but it lacks basic features that Meraki has - so its a balancing act)

[TheMrB]

I don’t know if this will help but these are the problems we have come across over the last month.

 

Really cool of you to share this, thanks mate.

 

 

.....

Thanks mate.

Plenty of answers, awesome.

 

Seriously, I've been looking at this for 3 hours, my head is ready to explode already!

 

Just.... Wow!

[tmcd35]

There is no native support for SMB, theres not really native support for WebDav so accessing User Home Folders has to be done via the web browser using something like HAP+, but then Safari has further restrictions on what files it can download to the iPad (iPads have no file system, its all per app sandboxing). And uploading to Safari is even worse, you can ONLY upload a picture or a video, so any work done in Pages etc has to be pushed via WebDav which is now, coming to the end of its life as its so insecure - but then, all apps may not support WebDav so you begin juggling ways to store files.

 

I have had one student here whose managed to work very well using Google Apps to transfer between a PC and the iPad.

[Meldrew]

Issues, which I can't see mentioned yet and I believe still cause problems - if there are solutions, I'm interested:

Students able to set passcodes preventing following student from using device.

Students able to change a range of setting causing device to not work in various ways for following student.

Lack of ability to use flash websites - alternative to use photon browser (for example) which has its own issues.

Likely damage inheritant to handheld devices

Not just initial cost, but replacement cost when devices are no longer usable - might be 50% of the longevity of a laptop, therefore replacement cost double a laptop.

Meldrew

[TheMrB]

Issues, which I can't see mentioned yet and I believe still cause problems - if there are solutions, I'm interested:

Students able to set passcodes preventing following student from using device.

Students able to change a range of setting causing device to not work in various ways for following student.

Would these not be prevented, or at least be quickly fixable through the Configuration Manager?

 

Lack of ability to use flash websites - alternative to use photon browser (for example) which has its own issues.

Yeah, it's a concern for me, but the teachers that have mentioned the devices are more likely to use apps than the web. I think as time goes on, HTML5 sites (and mobile sites as a whole) will cover most needs here. But we are a simple bunch here. if they can use youtube apps, they are happy!

 

Likely damage inheritant to handheld devices

Not just initial cost, but replacement cost when devices are no longer usable - might be 50% of the longevity of a laptop, therefore replacement cost double a laptop.

Meldrew

 

This concerns me a lot. It's been a concern since I started where I am and spent tonnes replacing Wireless PCMCIA cards because the cheaper laptops didn't have Wireless cards onboard (I've been here a while!) I just make sure that I mentions possible replacement and upgrade costs when it comes to budget proposal time and hope someone listens!

 

I think the best I can do is to warn of replacement (and upgrade) cost and advise that the cheapest alternative isn't always the best one.

Those manly looking shock proof cases look like they would protect it from a small nuclear explosion too, a worthwhile investment me thinks!

 

the balancing act of getting good stuff with forewarning of future costs, at least where I am, is an impossible one. I honestly stopped trying when my NM said that the kids wouldn't bother stealing the keyboards from surfaces because they are useless anywhere else(we've had 3 stolen in 4 months!) If I can't convince my NM, I just stopped trying!

[Shadow_Walker]

Students able to set passcodes preventing following student from using device.

 

Didn't even relise that was possible until you said that. I just tested on the iPad and that has to be another major flaw.

 

Likely damage inheritant to handheld devices. Not just initial cost, but replacement cost when devices are no longer usable - might be 50% of the longevity of a laptop, therefore replacement cost double a laptop

 

If I remember correctly we have a 3 year warranty on all the devices and KRCS just swap the device out no questions asked.

[Meldrew]

Would these not be prevented, or at least be quickly fixable through the Configuration Manager?

 

Not prevented as far as I understand. Fixable, perhaps but imagine the disruption to lessons and your time, plugging half a dozen into config manager every lesson to fix the stuff that's been changed.

 

Yeah, it's a concern for me, but the teachers that have mentioned the devices are more likely to use apps than the web. I think as time goes on, HTML5 sites (and mobile sites as a whole) will cover most needs here. But we are a simple bunch here. if they can use youtube apps, they are happy!

 

Agreed, but it would be worth teachers checking out all the websites they want to use beforehand to ensure they work.

[TheMrB]

Not prevented as far as I understand. Fixable, perhaps but imagine the disruption to lessons and your time, plugging half a dozen into config manager every lesson to fix the stuff that's been changed.

Good to know. I had no idea, hence this topic. Seems like a massive oversight on Apple's part to allow that.

Is there no instant, OTA fix? Wow, I don't much like that!

 

 

Agreed, but it would be worth teachers checking out all the websites they want to use beforehand to ensure they work.

Yep, I 100% agree.

But trying to get teachers to do preparation and planning is far FAR out of my skill set.

[SovietRussia]

Good to know. I had no idea, hence this topic. Seems like a massive oversight on Apple's part to allow that.

Is there no instant, OTA fix? Wow, I don't much like that!

 

Nope, to restore and fix the issues, have to use Apple Configurator which is a waste of time. Apple have been pushing this stuff in Schools for ages but we still don't have the proper school grade MDM policies that we need to properly implement them. But the entire iPad deployment model that Apple see is 1:1 iPads for each child, meaning that if a child puts a passcode they will know what it is as it is their device.