iCloud

[Michele Velthuizen]

Has anyone started using iCloud with their iPads in school? Please let us know whether there were any glitches, problems, etc.

[Tina]

We have deployed about 300 iPads to date. After careful consideration, we are not recommending the iCloud due to storage space. Most of our iPads are 16GB but apple only gives you 5 GB of free storage space. We don't feel it's right to ask teachers to purchase more space. II wondered if a work around could be accomplished by syncing only certain apps at once. Yet again, I don't the it would be fair to ask the teachers to swap out apps on a weekly basis.

[Sandy Munnell]

ICloud is not a solution for schools with large deployments. According to Apple, you can only sync 10 iPads to one iTunes account for iCloud services.  There are, however, some management tools, Mobile Device Management (MDM) available, albeit at some expense. CASPAR, Absolute, Airwatch are a few that I have heard of.

[Barry Kallmeyer]

We are using iPads in a 1:1 setup in our Middle School. There is a minimum age limit (13) for signing up for iCloud. We met with our local Apple rep yesterday, and they know this is an issue. They say they are working on a solution.

[Jim]

The other consideration for us in addition to the above 13 condition is that icloud also includes an unfulfillable .me email account.

[Tina]

Although we are not syncing to the cloud, we did create the me.com account for faculty for them to use to sync notes. We turned it completely off of the student devices. In lieu of the iCloud, we are simply having our schools to tether the device and continue to back it up on the computer through iTunes.