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You are here: Home / iPad / Best Practice: Setting up Teacher iPads

Best Practice: Setting up Teacher iPads

4 July 2013 by Karl Rivers 6 Comments

Configuring centrally managed iPads for the first time can be confusing. What is the best way to set up an iPad for a teacher, a student, or a BYOD device while still securing school data and applications? This guide details how to set up a school owned iPad for use by a teacher.

Setting up an iPad in this way provides the following benefits:

  1. The teacher can purchase and install their own personal apps.
  2. The school can distribute apps and books purchased under Apple’s Volume Purchase Programme and, more importantly, claim them back for redistribution later.
  3. The teacher can customise the iPad as if it where their own while still allowing the school to enforce settings such as WiFi configuration and passcodes.
  4. You can prevent data leakage through iCloud.

Note: This procedure can only be carried out on iPads supervised by Apple Configurator. The iPad should either be brand new or factory reset before following this guide.

Preparing the iPad

Turn on the iPad. The grey iPad unlock screen will be displayed. Do not enter any of the set up information at this point. We need to supervise the iPad through Apple Configurator and apply any configuration profiles before the iPad set up process is completed.

Connect the iPad to a Mac running Apple Configurator. Apple Configurator should detect that there’s an unprepared iPad and display a number above the Prepare icon at the top of the screen.

In the Name box enter a relevent name and tick the “Number sequentially”  box. If you choose the name “Teacher”, for example, and have more than one iPad, they will be automatically named “Teacher 1”, “Teacher 2” etc.

Make sure Supervision is set to On.

Create a management profile by clicking the + icon and configure the settings to your requirements.

Creating a Management Profile

You will probably want to include the following in your management profile as a minimum:

  • Wifi and proxy server connection settings to prevent the teacher having to do any manual configuration. If the teacher will be using the iPad outside of school do not use the HTTP Global Proxy option as this enables the proxy settings for all network connections.
  • An MDM profile for remote management.
  • Passcode requirements
  • Do not restrict the App Store.

Adding Apps

To push out apps to the iPad click the Apps tab at the top of the screen. From here you can click the + button and add any applications your require. For more instructions on how to do this take a look at our iPad add installation guide.

Done!

Once you are happy with your configuration click the Prepare button at the bottom of the screen. The iPad will now be configured for use and updated to the latest version of iOS.

The iPad can then be handed to the teacher without further configuration to allow them to go through the consumer set up process themselves. This gives the teacher the opportunity to enter their personal Apple ID and sync any of their personal apps or information.

From this point on the iPad will act as a consumer bought device other than the settings you have pushed to it through the management profile. But because this is a supervised iPad you can at any time plug it back into Apple Configurator and install volume purchased apps, adjust the settings, carry out backups, or reassign the iPad to another user without loss of data.

You also have the advantage of being able to remove apps purchased via Apple’s VPP and reuse them on other iPads simply by reconnecting the iPad to your Mac and unassigning them.

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Filed Under: Apple, Apple Configurator, Device Management, iPad, News

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About Karl Rivers

Karl Rivers is a Director of IT who has worked in education for more than twenty years. He won the Naace Impact Award for Supporting School Services.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Aaron says

    11/11/2013 at 3:25 pm

    Karl, really appreciate this guide and the other info on this site. It is very helpful. When managing teacher iPads in this way, how are the apps, distributed via apple Configurator, updated vs. the apps the teacher purchases. Thanks, Aaron

    Log in to Reply
    • Karl Rivers says

      11/11/2013 at 10:04 pm

      Hi Aaron,

      Thanks, I’m please you’re finding ClassThink useful!

      Check out this article on updating apps via Apple Configurator. I’m not sure whether these apps can be updated in the normal way by the teacher directly on the iPad. I’ll check it out and let you know.

      Hope this helps

      Karl

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  2. Peter van Rossum says

    11/21/2013 at 2:44 pm

    Hi Karl,
    Thx a lot for all your guides. I realize how much work this must have been. They really helped me preparing for the introduction of iPads on a school I provide Mac consultancy services for.

    Log in to Reply
    • Karl Rivers says

      11/21/2013 at 2:46 pm

      Hi Peter,

      Thanks for the compliment. I’m glad it helped!

      Let me know how you get on with your iPads. I’m always interested to hear the experiences of others.

      Karl

      Log in to Reply
  3. Cindy says

    04/13/2015 at 2:24 pm

    Can you tell me how to backup iPads that are supervised on Configurator? iTunes doesn’t work with Configurator managed iPads – Apple confirmed this. Someone at Apple Education support tried to walk me through backing up on Configurator, but that did not save photos or data, or any teacher added apps. I’m not finding it as simple as the article states. I thought I had it figured out, using Preferences on Configurator, but when we updated to 8.0, everything was deleted.

    Log in to Reply
  4. JM says

    09/25/2015 at 12:01 pm

    Greetings from Finland! This guide has been very useful, even though we have been waiting for El Capitan and Apple Configurator 2 before we set up the iPads in our school network.

    I was just wondering — if there are 10 iPads in a cart for the class to use, is there any value for reserving and configuring one of the tablets as a “Teacher iPad” instead of letting the kids use all ten? Are there any apps with a separate “teacher version”?

    If the only point for setting up a teacher device is to enable the teacher to use the SAME apps his/her students use, it seems the students would profit more from one extra student device. If there are supervisor or tutor features available in some apps, the resource use becomes more justified.

    Any thoughts are appreciated. 🙂

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