Tablets for Museum Educational Programme

[dmj]

I've been a bit out of the loop recently with regards to MDM and small scale tablet deployments.

 

Asking for a friend. The scenario is that a museum has a budget for a number of tablets (30 ish) to enhance their educational programme.

The museum is run by the local authority, but this is an in-house project, we're not expecting much support from the LA. There is site-wide wifi available that the devices can use ( I assume managed by the LA).

 

So the questions are:

 

What is the lowest cost MDM that could manage a small number of devices - it has to be super simple for the staff to manage.

Any suggestions for suitable tablets IOS/Android and suppliers

Any recommendations for cases, charging trolleys etc.

 

I'm tempted to recommend touchscreen chromebooks, but with no Google domain I'm not sure if Google would allow a museum to register for free as a school

 

Thanks any advice welcome

[LeMarchand]

People who know my views will know how much it pains me to say this, but I'd go for iPads. People seem to take more care of them and the battery life is superlative. Cases depend on use, but I'd tend to go rugged. Ours get charged off strips so I'll leave trolley recommendations to someone who uses one (remember to factor in case size, though).

 

Not used it, but Free Mosyle may be OK (if not, it's quite cheap) as MDM. I'd say initial setup isn't easy/obvious (or it wasn't with Lightspeed as MDM), but staff may be OK afterwards, depending on what will need doing.

 

All that said, they need a plan of how they are going to use the devices rather than the traditional school route of:

 

 

1. Get tablets
   
2. ???
   
3. Education enhanced!
   

[dhicks]

they need a plan of how they are going to use the devices

 

Agreed - maybe the first thing to get from the museum is what they plan to have pupils doing with the devices, and figure out if that's something that needs the pupils logged in to some account for. I'm guessing requiring pupil logins is going to be a bit much for the average museum / class teacher on a day trip to handle (what do you do with pupils who have login difficulties when you're away from school?). Are they maybe planning to use tablets as self-paced audio / visual guides pupils can take round with them? Or even as snazzy augmented reality viewers?

[LeMarchand]

Or even as snazzy augmented reality viewers?

 

If this, they may have been thinking of Google Expeditions. Alas, this appears to be discontinued.

[dmj]

If this, they may have been thinking of Google Expeditions. Alas, this appears to be discontinued.

 

NOOOooo Expeditions was awesome. Kids really loved it.

[Wired_Inside_90]

If it's only 30 iPads you're probably better off using Apple Configurator 2, a mac mini, or something similar, and a charge/sync station. you can load up apps and profiles for WIFI etc. The charge/sync station will probably cost a bit unless you just want to do it all one by one .

[jmak]

With DEP and an MDM I don't think there's any need for Apple configurator and a Mac mini any more. Probably additional cost and complication for somewhere without an IT department. I'd suggest buying through an authorised reseller and then they should arrive already registered in DEP.

Moysle seems to be the go to option for small deployments as it's decent and free for up to 30 devices (used to be 100[emoji17]) and I believe it's still about the cheapest. I haven't used it as I've used JAMF before, but that's pretty expensive (especially compared to free!).

With only 30 devices I don't think you'd need a caching server for updates.