BYOD advice please

[mike86]

Hi all

 

We have recently started piloting BYOD with our year 7 students, so far they have been using their tablets for note taking and internet browsing, however over the next term they are due to be installing a variety of apps. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience of this & what needs to be considered for students installing apps on various devices, as they will need to have a personal account for the relevant app store...maybe something for the parents to control?

 

If anyone can let me know how they've gone about it & how it's working out that would be great.

 

Thanks

[Renfield-64]

Hi,

although we haven't yet started BYOD there are some things to consider:

You should set up a separate wifi network - VLAN - so that you can a) Change the passcode frequently and b) have a transparent proxy so that you wouldn't have to set up proxy details on each device.

Any apps they download will have to be controlled (if at all) by parents. You shouldn't need to get involved with this as it is their device.

Have you got in place a policy for BYOD? Things like who is responsible for the device in school if it gets stolen, lost or damaged. This should always be the students responsibility and you should get parents to sign some sort of disclaimer that the school will not be held responsible for their devices.

There are probably already documents out there which you can borrow from to suit your school.

[mike86]

Thanks for your response, our BYOD vlan/wifi etc is already set up with students authenticating through smoothwall, they have only been using it for internet access and note taking. We are now in the process of looking into the best way for them to add new apps...I agree that it is probably best to have the parents control the store & setup accounts for the students. Looking into it it looks like legally they have to have the account set up by a parent until they are 13.

 

I think that they are planning to have the app installs done as part of a lesson, as they will be using specific apps during lessons. However I'm not sure installing the apps during the lesson is a good idea. Thoughts?

[Renfield-64]

You might find that some kids aren't given the appstore password by their parents (a wise decision if there is payment linked to the store). I would suggest that the kids installed the relevant app at home with the help of their parents, overcomes problems in the lessons, wasting time etc.

[foofighterjim]

Other things to consider if this is BYOD, are the apps available across all platforms (Android, Chrome, iOS, Mobile Windows)?

 

What if someone has an iPad 1 and the app needs iOS 7+ to install. Very difficult to expand beyond browser use for BYOD because you have no idea what the device is and what it is able to support.

 

Would your Network infrastructure and internet connection cope with downloading that many apps simultaneously? You may need to set QoS on Smoothwall to stop it from killing the internet for everyone else.

[mike86]

Cheers Jim, definitely something to check, however we do have a minimum spec for student tablets, but this was set out in September so things may have changed.

 

I'm expecting some issues with cross platform compatibility...but still haven't been told what apps they need.