Amazon Fire Tablets in Education - How to manage

[gtg93]

Hi All,

 

I have a school who have gone and purchased 30 amazon fire tablets... Does anyone have any recommendations on the best way to manage these in schools?

 

With normal android tablets, I know you can use the GSuite to manage them, however I don't want to go and buy the licenses to find out that the modifications amazon make to the OS prevent this from working.

 

In my experience other MDMs aren't great for Android. Free or cheap would be preferable, that way I can persuade the school to go with it.

 

Thanks!

[crwardell]

If the school uses Lightspeed for an internet filter. Their is an MDM built into that...

[gtg93]

If the school uses Lightspeed for an internet filter. Their is an MDM built into that...

 

Thanks but we have Smoothwall. However that's handy to know.

[fiza]

Hi All,

 

I have a school who have gone and purchased 30 amazon fire tablets... Does anyone have any recommendations on the best way to manage these in schools?

 

With normal android tablets, I know you can use the GSuite to manage them, however I don't want to go and buy the licenses to find out that the modifications amazon make to the OS prevent this from working.

 

In my experience other MDMs aren't great for Android. Free or cheap would be preferable, that way I can persuade the school to go with it.

 

Thanks!

Do you need management licences to manage Android Devices in G Suite? I thought that was for Chromebooks only? We have some Android phones which we have on G Suite and we can push out Apps to them from the G Suite Console.

[Norphy]

Reading about it a bit, Amazon have a management system called WhisperCast which may be what you're looking for:

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201634820

 

/edit or you could do what we did when somebody bought Fire devices without asking us first and tell them to jog on

Edited March 29, 2018 by Norphy

[gtg93]

Do you need management licences to manage Android Devices in G Suite? I thought that was for Chromebooks only? We have some Android phones which we have on G Suite and we can push out Apps to them from the G Suite Console.

From my experience, I thought you did - but maybe not... I'll have to have a look further

 

Just back on with these now and I'm having more of an issue getting them to work through smoothwall than anythign else! I've set the proxy setting but something's been blocked. As it's an LA run smoothwall, I need to speak to those to check logs for what's been accessed

 

 

Reading about it a bit, Amazon have a management system called WhisperCast which may be what you're looking for:

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201634820

 

/edit or you could do what we did when somebody bought Fire devices without asking us first and tell them to jog on

 

That looks great! Cheers

[gtg93]

Reading about it a bit, Amazon have a management system called WhisperCast which may be what you're looking for:

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201634820

 

/edit or you could do what we did when somebody bought Fire devices without asking us first and tell them to jog on

That looks great! Cheers

 

USA Only

[Arthur]

USA Only

I doubt WhisperCast is ever going to be available outside of the US. It has been over 5 years since Amazon launched it.

 

www.edugeek.net/forums/news/103022-amazon-whispercast-free-web-based-tool-distributing-ebooks-multiple-kindles.html

[hardtailstar]

We have some, they are useless.

[gtg93]

We have some, they are useless.

 

Don't sugar coat it!

[hardtailstar]

Don't sugar coat it!

 

Well i tried.

[forkies]

Just reviving the thread, did you get anywhere with this? I have just found out we potentially will be acquiring a class full of these and interested in how to manage these centrally and push out settings/security/ssl certificates etc. How to authenticate each user (as will be up to 5 a day) against smoothwall for monitoring, and how you went about securing all the settings.

[Ditto]

Just reviving the thread, did you get anywhere with this? I have just found out we potentially will be acquiring a class full of these and interested in how to manage these centrally and push out settings/security/ssl certificates etc. How to authenticate each user (as will be up to 5 a day) against smoothwall for monitoring, and how you went about securing all the settings.

A Google News search for the last year on "WhisperCast" gave no hits - doesn't look promising on that route! I haven't tried (or needed to) but I wonder if Google's Mobile Device Management could recognise them?