pinemarten

We just got our 13 laptops for Year 10, handing them out next week . Last week of term. What's the point ? - no work to be set over Summer and they are all back in September..... Another waste of money.

Yes, same here - although I do enjoy repairing laptops etc, you do need to concentrate to do something like that so it tends to be a holiday job as we are always getting pulled away on a school day to do something else Therefore it woulldn't work too well for ipads when we get 2-3 broken ones per day...

You are absolutely right, I stand corrected - hey thanks psydii !! Hadn't realised as only our Y7's have them and they tend to be careful with them! So- we only have around 450 Air 2's to worry about now - especially when they are are all paid for , they then get broken and parents dont want to shell out for a repair - meaning we then have to supply student with a loan one

We have run a 1:1 ipad scheme since 2014 , students issued with them in year 7 and parents paying for them by monthly instalments over 3 years . Apart from inevitable abuse and distraction , the biggest issue we are facing is breakage of the front glass - this was a major headache from day one , but now even a bigger one .. This is because the iPad Air 1 was relatively cheap to repair, the glass digitizer is around £50 plus labour. iPad Air 2 and the latest one however are a different prospect - the digitizer and LCD are bonded and both have to be replaced together - at £200 a time, plus labour !! We used to go via an insurance company for repairs , but the hassle involved meant a long wait for repairs so now we charge parents a repair "insurance" and use our own repairer. I have a feeling we are now onto a loser with Air 2's and newer ones though .. So this is another consideration with iPads - kids are kids , give them iPads and they WILL break them , and the expense can be enormous...

Thanks for your 'rants' Mr. Brimstone - I know insomnia can be a terrible thing (even in the real world)

It seems to me that you have to invest 100% in the teaching side of it (including getting staff on-side) or it's going to fall short of being a full-on success. You will still have all of the drawbacks to the 1:1 scheme (breakages, abuse, ownership issues etc) whatever happens - but only IF the school is prepared to incorporate the devices properly into the curriculum can the benefits become apparent. And it occurs to me that the drawbacks are easily measurable (% of breakages, number of abuse incidents, time/staff to manage them etc. ) , whilst the benefit to students is not so easily quantified - attainment figures are subject to so many other factors over a given period of time, and many iPad suited tasks (eg. video projects) can also be done on PC or Mac . So, it's quite hard to justify it on paper. That said, I have to concur that 1:1 is a good idea in principle and as a few have said it's almost a necessary approach to delivering certain cross curricular IT skills nowadays - but you have to do it properly and there will be still many tasks needing a PC/Mac or laptop...which of course form the IT tools future employment for students.

Yes, students do sign an AUP (and break it with little consequence) It's the free Meraki version. The legal side was considered , payments are processed by a 3rd party I believe passed to us as a charitable donation or something similar to avoid legal pitfalls ..

If we had not allowed students full control, far fewer parents would have signed up to the scheme and we could not have afforded to run it as a 1:1 ! We use Meraki MDM , but students are able to remove the profile so not much control there Site is set up with multiple VLans and wireless controller to balance the load. Printing is a case of emailing it then print off from PC.

We have had 1:1 iPads for almost 4 years now, a 3 year lease purchase scheme... Main issues for us have been; - Many many breakages , and having to supply students with temporary replacement iPads whilst theirs have been repaired by long-winded insurance scheme. - Abuse during school and at at home by students sending/sharing inappropriate text and images , police involved in some cases. - Charging cables breaking or developing faults, expectation of a replacement cable even when abuse is evident. - Inadequate wifi in some areas caused by devices connecting (even when idle). - Lesson management issues caused by student distraction. - Students constantly attempting to bypass filtering by using VPN apps etc. - Conflicts with parents regarding acceptable use at home of iPads which many feel were forced upon them by peer pressure. - Students causing damage to other students ipads - Inability to force MDM solution to stay on iPad , unable to use Configurator due to parent/school ownership issue arising from lease purchase arrangement. - Students locking themselves out due to forgotten passcode. - File handling issues caused by Apple IOS restrictions and practices. - Inability to access network resources or print documents. - Problems retrieving daily loan ipads from students who have decided not to opt into the scheme, and those awaiting repair. - Lack of suitable ongoing teacher training to enable full and appropriate usage of iPads in lessons . Some of the issues are of school management , some are due to shared ownership issues caused by lease purchase scheme. All of the above causes much work for many people and it is sometimes difficult to see the benefits to the students, to be honest. I suppose you could argue that for the benefits to be more evident, even more work and commitment would be needed... And it's a one way decision- once you are committed to 1:1 there is no going back .

Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing any adverse effects from iOS 10 implementation on iPads ? We have 1200+ ipads on our network and noticed poor connectivity in some areas since the start of term - nothing else has changed so wondering if this might be the culprit... With so many devices active onsite, network traffic would be constant anyway but we suspect certain features of iOS 10 might be causing an increase.

We are 1:1 with iPads now, 1200+ kids Looking for ways we can track student web access on demand , we have Smoothwall filtering (LA controlled, with limited privileges..) Not very user friendly regarding access logs . Does anyone know of another way we can track internet access for iPads (by IP or Mac address) ? Any thoughts please?

+1 for these, they are good.

We have gone for 3 of these to start with, Griffin MultiDock - 10 Bay (GA38330) - www.misco.co.uk They are great, you need some short charging cables to make a tidy setup though.

We use school asset manager School Asset Manager | The Solution to Better Asset Management This allows QR code entry , via ipad/iphone/ipod app. Plus a free ipod when we signed up

Wirral Computer Services Fast turnaround, fixed broken ipad screen for £50 -

Hi all, just looking for some advice here.. We have a room of 27 iMacs , just upgraded from 10.6 to 10.8 , and an Xserve running 10.6 Server. Move to 10.8 went fine (after a shaky start - resolved once DNS had sorted itself out..) Now using WGM 10.8 on a MacBook to manage them , seems to work fine. Question is , do I upgrade the server to 10.8 or leave it on 10.6? Any helpful opinions appreciated - thanks!

We have 240 student and around 50 staff E5500's (all are early 2009, 84J service tag) Several staff ones have had the broken hinge /lid issue , all have been on the RHS and all so far have been replaced under warranty. Warranty runs out in 2 weeks though , I think we may get more in the future (no plans to replace them unfortunately) Have to say - cracking laptops though in spite of this , just can't work out why it's staff ones that are affected ??

yes, agree but what is 'reasonable' ?.....therein lies the issue.

do you mean showing porn etc to other kids on their device? surely it then becomes a disciplinary issue, not a technical one? -same as passing around drugs/alcohol etc.. so the onus of sharing something bad rests on the willingness of the sharer to share it , (whether it be in school or elsewhere).

No - but the policies should only relate to access via school-owned connections . Proving that may be another matter - but as long as children are allowed to BYOD they can bring their connection with them. Parents give up their right to complain about their child's access to unfiltered web the moment they buy them a web-enabled device ....location is irrelevant, eg. a child living next door to the school can just as easily access porn on his mobile in the playground as he can over the fence in his parents' garden!

and mac is ....a scotsman.

if it was a "necro" thread before, it's fossilized now..

The Peachpit Apple certified series of manuals are very good, they are used in the 101 and 201 courses; Apple Pro Training Series: OS X Lion Support Essentials: Supporting and Troubleshooting OS X Lion: Amazon.co.uk: Kevin M. White: Books http://www.amazon.co.uk/Apple-Pro-Training-Essentials-Supporting/dp/0321775082/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

mine's like a rotting cabbage but at least the worms are having fun

I was thinking more about the screen when I saw this, HP nx's seem prone to screen faults anyway without being sat on.