Bev

Yes, and what confused me is you have to buy them in the VPP website. I bought them through Meraki, which has my VPP details, but that didn't work. I had to login to the VPP website, and buy 100 copies of each free app. No charge obviously, but you have to go through the motions. There is a way to convert the spreadsheets but I haven't tried that yet. I'm using hte latest version of Meraki but with less than 100 ipads, and I can import a VPP Spreadsheet. I might try that with one of our less popular apps incase it all goes pear shaped.... I'm a little worried about GarageBand, which I think when we bought it was free but then we had to pay for an in-app purchase to unlock it. It looks like it's not £3.99 with no in-app purchase. So I don't really want to have to rebuy it .

OK, I've done some digging and maybe I can set it up this way https://documentation.meraki.com/SM/Apps_and_Software/VPP_App_Licensing_by_Device_Serial and then I don't need AppleIDs.

You do need an AppleID, but I might try reusing the same one which would make life easier. https://documentation.meraki.com/SM/Apps_and_Software/Silent_installation_of_iOS_apps Must be associated with an Apple ID Must be supervised using Apple Configurator or Device Enrollment Program Must be running iOS 7 or greater

I thought if I was deploying apps from Meraki silently then they each had to have their own AppleID? In the past, I didn't have any AppleId on the ipads at all. - - - Updated - - - I think I do, as I am struggling to get the DEP set up as PCWorld can't supply the correct reseller ID

In fact, it seems they have removed the 'none' option even when buying a free app. I don't really want to put a credit card on each of these AppleIDs.

I've created 24 email addresses, and created the first AppleID but when I enter the details into the iPad it's requesting a credit card. I know it's possible to 'buy' a free app in iTunes and set up an AppleID without a credit card, but will I have to do that 24 times (once for each iPad?) They really don't make life easy, do they?

Thank you, I would have never found that!

Probably a stupid question, and I haven'#t read all 15 pages. But how to I view/edit a profile? I can create new ones, and apply existing ones, but I want to change one and I can't find any screen where I can view or edit the existing profiles.

I've bitten the bullet and paid for Air Server. It's irritating but one of those things that needs to be done.

We use Google Forms for this all the time, but we use Google Docs for most things. I don't know if Office 365 offers something similar.

We use MyMaths, Education City, Cool Maths, bbc bitesize, sumdog.

I also thought of that, I will try it tomorrow. Ive upgraded to configuration v2 so it will be an interesting day testing out how it all works, it looks very different

I think I will have to supervise any new ones that go out, but I can't wipe the existing ones. That would be very unpopular.

I decided to Supervise my iPad as a test, and it wiped all my Apps off it, is there a way to supervise them without losing all the staff's personal Apps, as that's not going to be a popular option!

Yes, I can see that would be more tricky. Do you have a Year 6 child that could be trained up?

I haven't been able to stop them being changed either. It's not been a big problem though. I get the occasional keyboard set to Dvorak but it's easy enough to change it back.

Our ipads don't have any AppleIDs on them at the moment, and we distribute all Apps through Apple Configurator but I think that's not considered correct. I have sort of made it up as I go along. There is a good link here http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/143645-ipad-setup-idiots-guide.html

I think the Chromebooks are great. We do have a few issues with forgotten passwords, but that was much worse with the laptops. However, apart from that I don't ever have to think about them. They don't need updates, no software to install, we don't use any Apps on them as the apps are all basically links to websites, so we just use them as a browser. They can be used for My Maths and Education City which the iPads won't do, we can log into Google Docs and write on them which isn't easy on an iPad. The battery life is very good, they get charged for 4 hours overnight and they last all day on that. Provided someone has remembered to plug them in!

Anything that is online will work on a Chromebook. Espresso Coding do a block language that would be good for KS1/2, we start at Year 5 and it's a bit too simple for what we need. We use Scratch a lot, that's all online now. Code Academy (although I find that a bit dry) We have decided to use CodeAvengers this year and see how that works. We trialled it at the end of last year and it looked good. Again, all online. Hour of Code have lots of resources that will work in a web-browser.

They log in and out, we just have 1 class set. I've just seen they have released a new public session mode which may help. I will need to experiment with that.

We replaced ours with ChromeBooks as we use Google Docs extensively in school anyway. The idea was that they would be quicker to get up and running but the kids still have to login, and the staff still complain they are too slow. (They are much faster than laptops, provided the kids can remember their passwords). In an ideal world, I would have the chromebooks in Guest Mode, so they can be used without logging in, much like an iPad. But you can't use Guest Mode with a proxy, so we are stuck with them having to login.

They have released a new version of Reflector but you have to pay for it again, it's not a free upgrade. I bought 12 copies last October, I object to have to buying them again, although I suspect in the end I will have to bite the bullet and do it.

I was coming to that conclusion, however, it means I am forced to upgrade them to ios 9 and we use Reflector which doesn't work with ios 9. So, I'm going to have to see if I can afford to upgrade/replace Reflector first.

All of our student iPads are setup using Apple Configurator and are 'supervised', the Staff ones are not, but I do have them in Meraki so I can wipe them remotely if they are lost. Last week, I needed to backup a broken ipad and restore it to a spare one. The spare one had an iCloud account on it, and while I could I wipe the iPad using Meraki, we can't restore to it as we don't know what the Apple Id is. (the error message gives a partial email address which doesn't correspond to what we would expect it to be). I suspect the email address was entered incorrectly and never verified. Anyway - I am currently in negotiations with Apple as to whether they will unlock the iPad so we can use it, if not, it's a dead ipad. Whilst all this is going on, I notice in Meraki that for the student iPads I have an option to disable the activation lock remotely. This only appears on the Supervised iPads. I am thinking it would be a good idea to have this on staff iPads as well. I can forsee a situation where a staff member leaves and we can't reuse their iPad, as well as this current situation with the invalid email address. But I'm wondering if there are any restrictions/disadvantages to 'supervising' the staff's ipads?

THANK YOU!!! I was stuck with having the wrong package name. For those with 32 bit machines, the command I used was C:\windows\system32\DISM.exe /Online /Remove-Package /PackageName:Package_for_KB3097877~31bf3856ad364e35~x86~~6.1.1.1 /quiet and it does appear to have worked. Interestingly, someone else mentioned the on-screen keyboard, and when I have managed to get onto the first affected computer the onscreen keyboard is displayed, so I wonder if there is a connection?