Is the relative lack of teacher control over student iPad use a relief or a recipe for disaster?

[Sam Gliksman]

Monitoring software can be installed on laptops that enables teachers to view and control their use. Teachers don't have that same level of command over iPads. I have been contacted by several schools that are concerned about the inability to view, monitor and control iPad use in class. Depending on your individual educational outlook, you may see this as a relief or a recipe for disaster. What is your opinion?

[Will Rubel]

I tend to agree with Bill Simmons regarding content filtering.  It is more efficient to let the existing content filtering software manage the filtering to the ipads.

 

In regards to the ability to view a students ipad content, and allow a student to broadcast their content to a projector or others in the class, I'm working on a concept called pseudo live HTTP streaming.  The application records the students activity as multiple 10 second videos and broadcast them via an internal HTTP server to the schools intranet.  

 

While I'm still working to adjust the frame-rate,content quality, and a few other issues, the uploaded video demonstrates what is being broadcast from a students ipad to the schools intranet.

 

I'm hoping to add audio to the movie from the microphone on the ipad.  This would allow a student to give a demonstration or briefing from their seat by broadcasting the content and speaking into the ipads microphone so others could hear what they are saying.

 

Is this still on-track with what teachers are looking for?

[Will Rubel]

For what it is worth, I finished the project I was discussing, and posted it on Github in-case anyone would like to download the application and try it themselves.  See: https://github.com/rubelw/IOS-Streaming-Browser

 

Note:  Instead of having the students ipad stream full-motion video, I have the application taking a screen-shot of the students browser every second.  This provides a little-bit of latency to a teacher who is monitoring a students activity, or a student presenting a briefing on a main projector, but it reduces the band-width.

 

Hopefully I can get some feedback from some of my teacher friends and other developers next week, and I'll let you know what they think.

 

 

[Will Rubel]

Here an actual working copy with 35 different ipad screens being streamed into a single file to allow a teacher to view all the screen shots.    While not currently setup, I hope to add the ability for a teacher to click on an individual screen, and it would become full-screen.

 

The other thing I noticed was the small screens give the student a certain degree of privacy, in that the screens can't really be read, but it gives enough of an idea about the content the student is viewing.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

[Todd Gibbs]

Janet Bremer said:

What about Lan School?  I heard they had an app for the ipads?? Anyone familiar with it?  I need to check this discussion and will appreciate whatever I read.  I will be knee deep in this coming this fall. 

[Todd Gibbs]

Apple has control over access to the iOS and therefore even LanSchool can't allow a teacher to see a student's iPad. However, you can chat with a student, have them vote on things, and assess understanding through quizes and tests. If Apple ever opens up the IOS you better believe that LanSchool will offer the ability to monitor an iOS device.

[Will Rubel]

Todd is correct in the sense of certified software posted on the AppStore,  However, for developers, we can develop and install any software on up to 99 computers.  For example, I could install custom software which allows teachers and students the ability to monitor each others computers.    The trick is to act quickly to get the devices setup before the beginning of the school year.  This means, you have a couple wees to develop and install the software on the devices and test them out, and then school is starting.

 

If your looking for educational software to view and test, I  would check GitHub or Google code.  There are many moble device applications being developed, and dowloadable for free.

 

Todd Gibbs said:

Apple has control over access to the iOS and therefore even LanSchool can't allow a teacher to see a student's iPad. However, you can chat with a student, have them vote on things, and assess understanding through quizes and tests. If Apple ever opens up the IOS you better believe that LanSchool will offer the ability to monitor an iOS device.

[julian coultas]

Steve Van Dyk said:

 I feel that the lack of teacher control is something that needs to be embraced, accepted, and then rendered meaningless by great lessons and content. 

 

I think this is one of the most sensible things anyone has said about the impact and effect of the iPad in school.

 

 

[Jim Manikas]

I am the director of technology at a private school that has about 600 laptops and this year adding 900 iPads.  As everyone knows, there is no way to get anything like the controls for the iPad that you have with a laptop computer.  The iPads simply can not be managed in the same way and you are absolutely giving up control.  But the bottom line is that it's OK.  From what we have seen even in the 6 weeks that we have been in school, the advantages from a one-to-one iPad program FAR outweigh the disadvantages.

 

One of those advantages is tech support.  We have always had to constantly keep control of the laptop computers because they were constantly having problems.  Even in the best of situations, computers lock-up, have conflicts, software glitches, network issues, etc.  The more computers you have, the more this happens.  Being able to remotely manage a computer is invaluable.  It helps the teachers because they really don't know how to troubleshoot theses kinds of problems and they shouldn't have too.

 

We are finding with the iPads that we simply don't have a need for this sort of management.  Most of the time, the only troubleshooting that you need to do with an iPad is click the Home button or quit out of an App.  Teachers find that in some ways, they have more control over the technology than they ever did before using "real" computers.

[Sam Gliksman]

Great point Jim. That seems to be the case everywhere there are large scale implementations. Given that we strive for educational technology solutions that are "invisible", that's a very large step in the right direction.

Jim Manikas said:

I am the director of technology at a private school that has about 600 laptops and this year adding 900 iPads.  As everyone knows, there is no way to get anything like the controls for the iPad that you have with a laptop computer.  The iPads simply can not be managed in the same way and you are absolutely giving up control.  But the bottom line is that it's OK.  From what we have seen even in the 6 weeks that we have been in school, the advantages from a one-to-one iPad program FAR outweigh the disadvantages.

 

One of those advantages is tech support.  We have always had to constantly keep control of the laptop computers because they were constantly having problems.  Even in the best of situations, computers lock-up, have conflicts, software glitches, network issues, etc.  The more computers you have, the more this happens.  Being able to remotely manage a computer is invaluable.  It helps the teachers because they really don't know how to troubleshoot theses kinds of problems and they shouldn't have too.

 

We are finding with the iPads that we simply don't have a need for this sort of management.  Most of the time, the only troubleshooting that you need to do with an iPad is click the Home button or quit out of an App.  Teachers find that in some ways, they have more control over the technology than they ever did before using "real" computers.

[Frank Garufi Jr.]

Hi...

 

I'm new to this site... I've tried reading through all 5 pages of replies but I didn't see anyone discuss anything regarding the camera on the iPad 2 and iPhone??!!

 

I'm the network engineer for a private Catholic high school in New Jersey. Alot of our students already own iPad 2 devices and we've prevented them from bringing them onto the network so far. Our big fear is the camera on the unit. We can filter the internet and even use devices like Excinda to prevent use of other non-appropriate apps, but how do you prevent a student from take a picture of a test and passing that along to another student who hasn't taken that test yet? How do you keep some of the privacy concerns that some teachers have when a student is able to either broadcast or record whats going on?

 

Because these are privately owned iPad's, not school assets, so I cant use the MDM to disable the camera on the device, or any other piece of hardware thats a concern. 

 

Has anyone else run into this? Does anyone else have these concerns or are we unique to this? 

[Julian K. Wells]

There are bunch of companies that try to offer this type of control, but most are meant to be useful for IT level staff not teachers...

 

http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iPad_MDM.pdf

That is what Apple has to get users to understand the process.

 

The link below has a list of companies that offer a variety of management solutions.

http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/integration/mdm/

 

I have seen or demoed Mobile Iron and they seem like a good one. It all depends or comes down to pricing and features?

http://www.mobileiron.com/

[Julian K. Wells]

Frank, that is a hard one. 

 

One of the reasons why technology has a hard time seeing adoption is due to complicated scenarios like the one you point out.

 

What have you found? or have you gotten feedback from other schools as to what they are doing.

 

Today a large portion of the student body carry around smartphones with cameras.

 

At our schools we allows students to just walk in with them into the classroom.

 

I can see how this could be problematic. Specially since we don't really have a mobile policy in place?