Friday 6-24-11

IPads – restoring syncing etc. – this is what we are doing and of course not necessarily the best but we will learn.

SEE UPDATE IN RED BELOW and next Blog

GOAL:

When the students turned in their iPads I had to quickly get them prepared for the teachers to check them out for summer. I chose to restore them – but I restored them to the student’s original condition – I could have restored the faculty version but there were too many random apps associated with those iPads.



Notes - We have a single laptop that is dedicated to syncing and maintaining notes on the iPads.  We also have 2 different log ins, one for students and one for teachers. I was using the student login and therefore the iTunes account etc would restore to the student iPad unit.



SUMMARY - <<<<UPADATE NOTE 7-30-11>>> As of the last IOS and itunes update much has changed - if you try to sync on a computer that is not "authorized" on the itunes account that you are using on the ipad then the apps WILL BE ERASED!

Before we go into the various details the summary is as follows…

When you plug in your iPad to the computer it was originally synced with, logged in as originally logged in (in case you set up diff logins for teacher, student, admin etc), the iPad will be backed up. This will upload any apps that it has on it that were downloaded while away from the computer and backup the files on the iPad. At this point, choosing to restore the iPad will either erase all files and reset all the apps that you had OR you can restore the iPad with all the old files and apps that you had.



Question – is it the iTunes account that iTunes is logged into when the syncing occurs or is it the user(login) that the iTunes account is hosted on that determines the sync? By login I mean that we have 1 computer set up for different users to log in – that separates the iTunes account/music/etc and keeps them independent.

Answer – I am fairly certain that it is the user(login)  computer that the iTunes software is hosted on that determines the sync.



DETAILS

Here is what I did

1.     Logged into the iPad laptop under the “student” login

2.     Received the iPads and plugged first one into the iPad laptop

3.     Once plugged in, iTunes recognizes the iPad as being synced with this computer and backs up the iPad

4.     Click “restore” – this causes a warning that all data will be erased etc. – we find out later that this is not necessarily true – we click OK to this

5.     The restoration process begins and at some point another screen pops up saying something – then the following comes up on the screen





The pull down menu has a list of all the iPads that have been synced. The default selection is the one that was just plugged in. Here is what happens depending on the selection – I SELECTED (a.) below

a.    Set up as new iPad – this erases all data and files that might have been on the iPad, installs all the apps that iTunes has on this computer has and restarts. Note that during the earlier backup process the apps would have been synced      

b.    Restore from the backup of <pull down menu> -- this restores to the most recently backup up state that the selected iPad was in. This is good to transfer between iPads or if you get the iPad 2 and want to transfer all your files etc – It brings over everything – home screens, email name and accounts, etc.

6.     So, given that I selected a, it takes a couple of minutes but then you have a fresh iPad with all the apps from the student login that you set up.





CONCLUSION –

So far I think that what we will do to is to set up a different login for the 8th grade. Then we will

1.     Decide on which apps the eighth grade will start with

2.     Load those apps onto the computer

3.     Chose to “restore” all the new iPads to sync with this master





As a final note I tried several different methods of transferring and syncing between accounts/logins etc but it seems that this is the best so far – I am sure that new discoveries will be made later.

Tue 6-21-11

Last week the students returned their iPads. A few comments – see pictures @ end for details of below

1.     Of the roughly 20 iPads on campus – one student iPad’s home button stopped working – we had an extra iPad for her to use but it made us realize that we would need backup devices for next years roll out. We have not taken the iPad in yet so we will see about time and cost to repair.

2.     The screen covers – these are rather difficult to apply but 2 of the iPads had visible scratches on the screen cover – the screen would have certainly been scratched

3.     The double case idea works well – we have the iPad case by Apple (will need to re-think this for the iPad 2) and another case by Amazon that serves as a small briefcase (almost man-purse – Seinfeld). This case is neoprene, has one pocket for the iPad and another for accessories. The accessories thus far have simply been the charger and stylus

4.     The students tested 2 different stylus and although the second style was more liked it broke more easily. This is going to be a big thing to define because they are not cheap. I will be looking at a few styles this summer. The styles we used are shown in the picture below (NOTE that they are both lost rather easily and out of 7 students, 3 lost them)

5.     iPad chargers – no students lost them and 2 teachers lost them – the teachers checked out iPads for 2 months at a time in order to become familiar with them.

6.     We might need to label the chargers in the even that someone looses his/hers

7.     Charging iPads for class – the battery life of the IPads is so good that some could go for a full week without charging. This negative to this is that they forget to charge them – so yet another reminder/rule to discuss charging. Rules, while good, are less effective than teacher reminders.

8.     AUP – In addition to the regular AUP items we will need to look at the items listed above and form rules/guidelines for them.

9.     Once returned we needed to restore the iPads so that the teachers could check them out for the summer. More on that later.