Tammie

Very much so - I find there is so much advice out there regarding iPads in Education it's very hard to find something current that is easy to understand. At the moment I use AC and have a good understanding of the process. We had thought about MDM as I assumed it was 'better', but I am concerned about having to enter our Apple ID password all the time (something I read from your site). Is that one of the reasons you are using AC?

Thanks for your reply Karl - your blog is very useful and I have read it many times before! I've just had a look at your guide and I will be studying it in depth I think... So if I was to follow the instructions on the 'Setting Up Teachers' iPads' page, effectively that would mean two Apple IDs attached to the iPad - our school ID that I use with VPP for the apps installed via AC, and their own ID that they input. Is that right? If so, you don't see an issue with that? That's what I thought I was going to do to start with but others seem to suggest that wouldn't work.

Ok... so with Configurator we would run into problems because of the two IDs being used on each device needing a password. MDM doesn't have that issue because I'm effectively only using one ID, theirs. I'm a little confused with MDM though as I had a training course on it a couple of weeks ago and the trainer said you don't need an ID per device to push out apps OTA?

Thanks Brimstone for your reply. I've read the pdf, but I can't see where in it it says what I want to do would be an issue? I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just not sure which bit you're referring to! The generic apple ios7 info says this - Institutions purchase app licences through the VPP website, and can use their MDM solution to assign apps to students, teachers and staff over the air. Students can enrol with their personal Apple IDs without providing it to their institution, and apps are placed in their purchase history for self-service download, or are installed automatically via MDM. While I appreciate I may have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, I thought this meant you can distribute apps both automatically via MDM and to the teachers' own IDs? Feel free to put me straight...

Thank you both for your reply. We would purchase apps through VPP and while I usually import all the codes into Configurator I understand you can email individual codes to users too? That link was very helpful! It does describe what my colleague wants in the Layered Ownership scheme. I guess he's happy if when a member of staff leaves they take the odd app with them (we only have about 25 members of teaching staff) but it's nice to have that clarified.

I don't have any other suggestions but yes, you are correct that you are limited with the free version of Book Creator. We had to buy it in the end. I'd be interested to see what others suggest!

Thank you for your reply - I've just shown my ICT Co-ordinator this! He did want to give staff the option to explore apps for themselves before we buy them and they know their own year groups better than me, hence the request for both ways of doing it. But any wisdom gratefully received!

Hi all We are about to issue our staff with iPads. We already have a number and they are all supervised by Configurator (hoping to switch to MDM once I get my head around it!). We would like to have these supervised too but have the staff able to purchase their own apps with their own ID - is this possible? Many thanks....

Hello all We want to add the "Activate X-Ray Goggles" button to all bookmarks bars via the server - I'm not sure this is possible as it's not a link to a url, but I thought I'd ask just in case. If anyone knows if this is possible, I'd be very grateful! Tammie

Thank you all for your replies, it is appreciated! Angry - I have tried IE HistoryView but I don't think I'm doing it right. Wherever I put the file, I just get the history of the account I'm signed in as. I tried putting it in a student's folder, but because I was logged in as me it just gave me my history. Do you know where I am going wrong? Gaz - that is a good idea. Our filtering is provided by SWGfL, so I'll ask them if it's possible. Impero looks very good, not sure we have money for that though! We had a new server recently... hence I'm here asking the questions! It might just be simplest to log on to the last pc they used, although I'm not always in the room when they log on, so I can't guarantee where they were.

Hello all I am fairly new to windows server administration, and I want to be able to check a pupil's internet history remotely. Is there any way I can see this on the server? Many thanks!