iPad Management and Best Way to Buy?

[Gongalong]

Hi folks,

 

We're thinking of switching to iPad for tablets.

 

1. What's a recommended way of managing them e.g. locking them down and removing apps, and also deploying apps?

2. What's the best way to buy them in terms of discount, or is it essentially an education discount and no more?

 

Thanks

[Helen25]

Use Apple School Manager and Zuludesk for the MDM here - still getting to grips with all the features of ZuluDesk. My iPads were purchased through Apple approved supplier and even the local Apple Business team couldn't better their pricing with Education discount.

[RLR]

Hi folks,

 

We're thinking of switching to iPad for tablets.

 

1. What's a recommended way of managing them e.g. locking them down and removing apps, and also deploying apps?

2. What's the best way to buy them in terms of discount, or is it essentially an education discount and no more?

 

Thanks

 

 

 

1. What's a recommended way of managing them e.g. locking them down and removing apps, and also deploying apps?

 

You will need to look into an MDM solution. Some examples: Jamf Pro, Meraki, LightSpeed, Airwatch etc. This will probably be an additional cost to the iPads as you'll require licenses to use the MDM solution. The MDM will allow you to control the iPads. You'll also need to look into setting up the school with Apple School Manager to enable you to purchase apps and create managed appled IDs. It will also provide you with a Device Enrolment Program (DEP) ID which you can give to suppliers so they can assign iPads to your institute.

2. What's the best way to buy them in terms of discount, or is it essentially an education discount and no more?

There isn't much discount when it comes to iPads. You probably best off going to a few company's and asking for quotes (jigsaw 24, Albion and many more) These company's can usually help with getting everything setup. Leasing might be worth it if you want to spread the cost over a few years.

1. What's a recommended way of managing them e.g. locking them down and removing apps, and also deploying apps?

2. What's the best way to buy them in terms of discount, or is it essentially an education discount and no more?

[Bev]

At one school where I work, we used to use Meraki which was free, and do still use it for one old class set of iPads. It works well but it's no longer free for new users.

For our 1-1 iPad deployment we use Lightspeed which costs £5 per ipad per year.

 

At the other school where I also work, we needed a free solution, and I found Mosyle mentioned on here. It has some paid for features but so far I've been able to do everything I need, and for free I really can't complain.

 

All 3 of them can do the same things, they all look very different. I think I prefer to use Meraki but that's also the first one I used so I am more familiar with it, but I've been able to lock them down, install apps, unlock forgotten passcodes (very important!), find lost ipads, etc on all of them.

 

 

For our 1-1 deployment, we offer parents 3 choices. They can lease an iPad (we use Jigsaw), they can provide their own iPads, which must be factory reset and added to our MDM, or we will provide an iPad which can't leave school. We have a small percentage who opt out, about 65% lease, and 30% bring their own. There is no discount to leasing, in fact with the insurance policy and case it works out more expensive, but they replace or repair the iPads without any issues which was important to us.