jvolzer

This is a little late for your January posting, but just in case there's still interest.... have a look at TabPilot, a new Android tablet management system for schools that was released into beta testing this summer. It will lock down the tablets, let teachers choose what can be used during their class, and it's also an app-distribution platform to remotely install apps on groups of devices. I won't put much else here because it's my company that created it and it's not appropriate to make a commercial out of this post, but the system should do just what you're looking for. You can PM me or just Google the product and use the contact page on the site for more info.

One more thing to add on Android Market. I see that they now have the ability to require a PIN for purchases. This is available in Market 3.1 and newer. I'm not sure when that came out though, as I just noticed the PIN feature on my phone. So this would help in the scenario where the generic school account is installed on all devices to allow the ability to push down apps. The PIN would prevent a student from buying on that account. An applock app would keep them out of market completely, but the PIN would be good if they needed to access their own account added to the device (which might be the case in a 1-to-1 setup).

I tried Adfree after rooting and it wasn't all that great. It blocked a few ads in apps. Sometimes you just get a black box where the ad would go, so it's not like you reclaim any screen space. In a game like Scrabble, where you get a full screen 10 second ad after each move, Adfree didn't skip the add and jump back to the game, but, instead, either showed and ad anyhow, or just had a blank screen for 10 seconds. I've not tried AdAway, so I can't speak to that. The most useful thing for me with AdBlock Plus in Firefox on my desktop computer is that for sites that stream video, like news sites, the commercial at the start of each clip is actually skipped and you get right to the news clip. I don't think there's anything like that for Android. As the lifehacker article points out, you can only do blocking in the browser if you're not rooted.

There are multiple factors in play and it depends on what you want to accomplish and how the devices are used. Managing Windows computers is quite a chore, so I'd definitely not say that tablets are a headache by comparison. There are two issues being discussed here: lockdown and app distribution For app distribution on Android, Market will work if you add the same Market account to all the devices. When you use your browser (rather and on-device) to add paid or free apps to your account you'll get a drop down of all devices registered to the account so that you can add to all of them and push the app to that device. If it's an account with a credit card attached, there's a new feature in Market that allows you to add a PIN code to have purchases approved. Nice! For lock-down purposes, there are bunch of app-lock programs that can do the trick, requiring a PIN to access anything on the lock-list, including system settings. All of this assumes we're talking about shared devices. If you get to a 1-to-1 situation where all students have their own device, then there's as much need. For example, my company helped a local school acquire inexpensive tablets that were issued to every student. They keep them all year and are allowed to put their own Market account on it and pretty much do anything they want, as long as they keep it in working order to be able to access the Internet for research and on-line text-book access during the day at school. It becomes almost "hands-off" for the IT department, other than keeping the WiFi up and running (and beefed up to handle the load). Rather than worry about network access for things like local storage, students simply use Google Docs, so the IT department doesn't have to manage that either. Dropbox and Box.Net would be other ideas. So the app management and lock-down is primarily for shared use environments. My company is exploring products to manage groups of these centrally, beyond what's described above though, so I may have more to report later. In terms of Windows 8, I have little hope if it means all of the traditional labor-intensive things involved with managing Windows computers...viruses, spyware, the need to re-image yearly due to slow down, not to mention boot-up time, reboots, etc. etc. As far as Android vs. iPad, obviously the iPad is much more heavily used right now and does have some better tools like automatic app installation in the background. There will also be more/better apps for some areas such as assistive technology, making them great for special ed classrooms. On the other hand, iPads can be twice the cost of an Android tablet if you know where to look, making it easier to reach the 1-to-1 ratio with Android. For example, the same school we helped acquire 7" tabs last year for under $200 ea. is now piloting a 10" android device that will cost under $300 USD in bulk, and that's for a nice IPS screen (same as iPad) and Android 4.0 ICS (beta currently installed). Compare that to to $500 to $600 USD minimum for iPads and you can see whey they are experimenting with it. Remember that the whole market is new for this, so things will evolve rapidly in the next year or two. Pilot sites will be invaluable.

That seems like an easy fix. Just use one of the many applock apps to block market from runnung without the passcode being entered.

Did you find a good solution for locking down the devices? Did you just go with a stand alone app locker? What age range are the students where you're using these? It's been a couple of months since your post, so I'm curious to know if/how much the teacher is using them.