Late Start

It's been challenging to get this iPad project started because there were just so many details to getting the iPads set up for our students' use.  I am excited about this project, and the students' faces just lit up when I told them what we were going to be doing with the iPads this school year.

After I received the 15 iPads and the Bretford cart, it took many hours to set them up properly for the students to use.  Since I'm in the library with no assistance, I had to ask a volunteer to come in for 1 1/2 days to work on them in the back room while I worked with students in the library.  I couldn't use student help with most of this because passwords needed to be used.

Here's a list of some of the things that needed to be done:
1.  Charge and sync all iPads to the MacBook iTunes account after having set up an iTunes account (without a credit card attached) and an Apple Volume Purchasing Program (VPP) account.
2.  Individually set each iPad with restrictions:  I restricted deleting apps,YouTube, and allowing changes to  Location (so that Find My iPad can't be turned off).
3.  Individually set each iPad to sync with a folder with the student pairs' names on them.
4.  Individually set each iPad with Find My iPad and add location services
5.  Individually organize folders on each iPad
6.  Sign into Dropbox accounts on each iPad
7.  Link each iPad with a Dropbox account for the iTalk app
8.  Set up student pair folders in iPhoto to import photos from the iPads.

Then I created a form with all the passwords and user names for restrictions, iTunes, Dropbox, VPP, and Mobile Me to share with the principal so that I wasn't the only one who knew all this info.

Some of this I figured out with trial and error, but I couldn't have done most of it without some great Live Binders such as this one created by Mike Fisher.

I created a Live Binder too back in March when I was applying for the Qwest grant, but it's nothing like Mike Fisher's.  It's actually somewhat chaotic and spare, but it has been useful to me.