iPad setup recommendations

[boogster]

Hi All

 

I have been asked to look into getting 16 iPad Air2 for a small school. They do not want loads of apps and not to have to purchase a mac etc. Can anyone make any recommendations on the following

 

1, Charging trolley

2, best way to get the apps on (synch or just standalone)

3, connection to a promethean IWB (not apple TV)

4, printing app

5, best practice to save photos, vids, docs somewhere

 

I would appreciate any advise and if you can think of anything else that may help that would be much appreciated as this will be the first ipads in the school so unsure as to the best way to attack these.

 

Thanks

[fredbayker]

Step 1 First thing I'd do is sign up for a DEP/Apple school manager account (new education equivalent of VPP) and a meraki account.

 

Step 2

Make sure your supplier is a Registered DEP reseller and pass them YOUR DEP code when purchasing so the devices can be supervised and added to your DEP account. This way your devices are supervised without the need for a Mac.

 

Step 3

Setup your meraki profiles and settings.

 

Step 4

Sign into iCloud on your devices for tracking - one Apple ID will suffice for upto 100 devices Add your devices to meraki.

 

Step 5

Purchase your apps via VPP and also add them into meraki.

 

Step 6

Deploy apps using device licensing.

[fredbayker]

For casting onto external screens, try airserver.

I personally would purchase a charge & sync trolley.

For printing you can try presto (by collobos) or a lantronix print server

For saving pics etc, somebody mentioned a product called foldr but it's quite expensive.

[Joanne]

I agree with most of what @zhinkler says.

 

For printing I have always used the printer manufacturer app - eg/ We have Konica Copiers, so we use PS Mobile. If you have an other brand of printer there should be an app for it.

 

For saving I use dropbox to aid transfer of things like comic life saves or whatever. I set dropbox up on the server and I point it to the Staff Shared area. So when someone saves to dropbox on the iPad it syncs to the server and then the teachers can print them from there or save to a more secure place.

 

In regards to the trolley, I really like Parotec ones. I have the iNsync ones... Charge, Sync, Store, Protect Multiple iPad & Tablet Devices

[smithson83]

@Joanne how much (ball park) do those iNSync trolleys go for, they look much better than the GoCabbys

[Joanne]

They aren't cheap. Around £1500. Depends on the supplier and the iPad configuration. Mine were 24 port, so 16 port might be a bit cheaper

 

Supplier list is here - http://parotec-it.co.uk/stockists-uk

Edited June 29, 2016 by Joanne

[boogster]

Hi Joanne

 

Are these sturdy and do they have the cables built in or do you need to hook up. Is there any charging timer etc on these.

[boogster]

Hi Zhinkler

 

So if I go with DEP and ASM (VPP) I will not need a MAC to configurate devices but all gets done wirelessly? Is this what you mean by supervised?

[XiJ]

Hi Zhinkler

 

So if I go with DEP and ASM (VPP) I will not need a MAC to configurate devices but all gets done wirelessly? Is this what you mean by supervised?

 

That's correct. The only thing I found I had to do was connect to the wireless network - and in our case enter proxy settings which is a few more 'clicks'

 

Then enter Apple ID that you greater - and off you go. They'll be supervised and you can push out apps purchased through VPP using Meraki.

 

I believe you can also push iOS updates now too. Although I do like to use configurator on a Mac for that.

[ITJS2015]

Lap Safe is a good company to buy a Sync and charge trolley, depending on your budget.

 

Everyone on hear is all correct regards to meraki and is it so user friendly. Apart from the support which they will not support you on a free license unless you have any meraki product on site.

[Joanne]

Yeah the Parotec cases are super sturdy. I think you can buy them with built in cables or just USB ports for you to use the cables that came with the iPads. Only down side is that they can get trapped in the case. I've managed to show kids how to plug them in and to watch out for trapping cables - it's staff that don't check!

[boogster]

Hi All

 

Thanks for your input/advice. So I have set up a ASM account and a Meraki. We do not have the iPads yet so I don't suppose tre is anything I can do with this yet?

 

Do I require a VPP account also setting up for the school?

 

What is the best way to mirror to IWB for the teacher PC/iPad? Activ cast OR Reflector or another?

 

Also will we be able to lock down the ipads so that the pupils cannot delete apps or add pin codes etc? If so is this done in Meraki or ASM

 

Thanks

Edited July 12, 2016 by boogster

[broomop]

Hi All

 

Thanks for your input/advice. So I have set up a ASM account and a Meraki. We do not have the iPads yet so I don't suppose tre is anything I can do with this yet?

 

Do I require a VPP account also setting up for the school?

 

What is the best way to mirror to IWB for the teacher PC/iPad? Activ cast OR Reflector or another?

 

Also will we be able to lock down the ipads so that the pupils cannot delete apps or add pin codes etc? If so is this done in Meraki or ASM

 

Thanks

 

Don't worry about the VPP its only needed for bulk purchasing and can be activated at any time. Also everything can be done on Meraki side. If you follow the steps the guy first posted done it will save you loads of time. I did everything the hard way, you have to get the iPads back again to reset them for DEP if you miss that step out.

[boogster]

anyone know the best app for displaying the teacher ipad onto an IWB via the PC. Free or paid for. Thanks

[dloudon96]

You can trial air sever for 14 days, that seems good. We have Apple TV's which don't get used. You can use air server. Which works fine.

[Sheridan]

Air server is great, but it doesn't work across vlans or different subnets. I've tried everything to get our xirrus wireless connected iPads to connect to air server but it's not happening!

[fredbayker]

Airserver (and others I guess ) work using bonjour (mDNS) using broadcasts. I don't know too much about configuring switches so don't know how to get it working

[Eudora931]

A newer model of Apple TV will AirPlay iPads over Bluetooth..

[mikeyd101]

I've used reflector 2 which seemed todo a good job.

 

PC and Wifi may have to be in same broadcast domain or routing between the vlans if different.

[LukeC]

We use airserver and its great no need for apple tv, we have it installed on all staff laptops (35) we do have an apple tv but staff cant annotate over the top on their iwb. We also use it across different vlans, it works well for the price and support is good except different time zones.

[Sheridan]

We use airserver and its great no need for apple tv, we have it installed on all staff laptops (35) we do have an apple tv but staff cant annotate over the top on their iwb. We also use it across different vlans, it works well for the price and support is good except different time zones.

 

What did you do to get it to work across vlans? I've got Xirrus setup to enable Bonjour Director across all VLANS, and multicast enabled across the wired/wireless vlans, yet the ipads cannot see the Airserver PCs?

[LukeC]

Off top of my head we had to allow mdns as well as bonjour as this was being dropped on our firewall. Drop me a pm and ill check when im back in work will be a couple of weeks though

[Primus]

AirServer Connect can help in instances where vLANS are preventing the Bonjour traffic flowing since once the discovery has happened the traffic flows properly. However it's not great as you have to scan a QR code every time you want to mirror.

[Sheridan]

AirServer Connect can help in instances where vLANS are preventing the Bonjour traffic flowing since once the discovery has happened the traffic flows properly. However it's not great as you have to scan a QR code every time you want to mirror.

 

I'd settle for that but when I try to connect it pops up a message saying port 7100 might be blocked, but this happens even when the Windows firewall is disabled.

[aarongulley]

Hi All

 

I have been asked to look into getting 16 iPad Air2 for a small school. They do not want loads of apps and not to have to purchase a mac etc. Can anyone make any recommendations on the following

 

1, Charging trolley

2, best way to get the apps on (synch or just standalone)

3, connection to a promethean IWB (not apple TV)

4, printing app

5, best practice to save photos, vids, docs somewhere

 

I would appreciate any advise and if you can think of anything else that may help that would be much appreciated as this will be the first ipads in the school so unsure as to the best way to attack these.

 

Thanks

 

In my opinion from previous experience.

 

Trolley:

For the trolley we use iPad syncing, charging and storage Trolley. Perfect for schools but you need to make sure if you get the cheaper version which is the charge only rather than the sync and take this in consideration with the sync and charge that it has rubber grommets protecting the charging cables because children tent to pull the iPad rather than unplug it.

 

App Management

I would use Cellabus or Lightspeed if you want MDM management but if you want general control without using Wi-Fi power (Please note if you have a MDM server you will need a MAC Server to cache the apps). If you want general mangement and profiles, I would use Apple Configurator 2 with blue prints. You can now add bundle IDs to delete stock apps. This only 9.3.3 and AC 2.2

 

Mirroring screen

We use at our school Reflecter which works perfectly but you need to make sure you have great Wi-Fi, there is other versions like AirServer (untested) but Reflector works well

 

Printing

We did use Printopia for the past year which prints directly to a printer, it tricks your iPads in to think you have a AirPrinter in the building, you'll need to install it on your server Mac/Windows works on both, but we have moved to PaperCut Management for control of printing through users and limit the printer costs, which works perfectly as long as your students use network accounts, but you can setup class based accounts if you want to get complex.

File Management

We use Stratospherix - FileBrowser works perfectly with AD and OD but you need once again the users to log into the network accounts, if you want another opinion sign the school up for Apple School Manager and use their cloud service which installs a home screen on the iPad iCloud Drive which copies, pages, numbers, keynotes and photo's and videos from the iPad.

 

Hope that helps you get setup

 

Thanks

 

Aaron.

Edited July 31, 2016 by aarongulley