Tuesday, January 31, 2012

iPad Initiative - Setting Up Apple IDs

The next step in our iPad initiative was to figure out how to create Apple IDs for our end users (teachers and students). How should we do this? 
We considered the following:
1. Do we allow teachers to use their own Apple IDs when they set up their iPads?
2. Will the district reimburse a teacher for buying apps for the classroom using their own credit card?
3. What if the district purchases apps? Who keeps the apps?
4. What if a teacher changes classrooms / campuses or leaves the district?
5. Students do not have district emails so how am I going to set up their Apple ID?
6. Will each device need an Apple ID?
7. Do students need an Apple ID?
In my head, this list went on and on. After consulting with our team, the technology department, various Apple reps and of course, Twitter, we decided to go with generic emails for teachers to help set up generic Apple IDs.
Teacher IDs
Our technology department though it would be best to use generic teacher emails so that it could be passed on to another teacher should a teacher leave the district. This had to be done in Active Directory as well. If you'd like more info on how that was done, let me know.
The emails looked something like this
iteacher61@normandysd.org
In addition to the teacher, we also have a Instructional Technology Specialist who will support the campus teachers. We provided that individual an iPad and created them an Apple ID as well. 
The "6" was the grade level and the "1" stood for the first teacher in the grade level. The teacher will then set up their iPad with that email as their Apple ID. If a teacher leaves the district, then the new 6th grade teacher would step into their place and iPad and Apple ID could easily be passed on. 
Student IDs
We determined that students would not need IDs. We would instead create an Apple ID for the iTunes account that would be shared across the 30 devices. So this eliminated the need for individual IDs on each device. I spoke with an Apple rep and he said this was acceptable under the Apple Volume Purchase Plan. We would still be required to purchase 30 Pages apps, for example. More on how we are doing that a little later. Our technology department created another generic email for the iTunes account. Due to the fact that we were using a Bretford sync cart (with the hopes of adding more carts / iPads) we used an email similar to this
ipadcart1@normandysd.org
Ok, now that we have the Apple IDs in order, I'm moving on to setting up the Volume Purchase Plan. But that's another post. 

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