tablets for early childhood education

[goodcooper]

well, the management folks who are responsible for early childhood have approached me (the IT side) about getting some new technology in the classrooms


these would be for 3 and 4 year olds...

they currently have PCs with touchscreen monitors (mostly ancient CRTs) on updated windows 7 machines running a few really rudimentary educational programs...

i don't even know where to start with the following:

how to manage ~50 devices in a way that doesn't include us manually installing a number of apps on 50 different mobile devices

what hardware? android? ios? some rugged model that is better suited?

software? what apps, do you simply leave these machines open to be played with, or do you have software on these organized in such a way that students can only access certain apps so they're not messing up settings, etc...

i don't really know where to start... was hoping someone here was in a similar situation

 

[wizdum]

Run. Run as fast as you can away from this idea. Most of the schools in my state are 1:1 iPads for students, and its a nightmare. This district has about 1,500 iPads, and after 4 years we pretty much just let the students do whatever on them, because management was terrible. We go through about $5000 in repairs per month.

Theres some nice software to manage them remotely, but most of it is in the "Fortune 100 company" level, and not the "public education" level. Meraki MDM is free, and should work fairly well. It works with iPads and Android devices. We use JAMF at the state level, which seems to work quite well: http://www.jamfsoftware.com/ .

The biggest issue is that there really isn't a nice way to enroll all the devices without going to each one and manually installing the certificate. IOS devices specifically have many features that are great for individuals, but terrible for the enterprise/education. To cut down on thefts and fraud, theres a limit to the number of devices that can be activated at one location, theres a limit to the number of times you can use a device to create an Apple ID, and if someone changes the AppleID/password and locks the device, you might as well throw it away because theres no way around the activation lock.

I have no Android experience to back this up, but I think the tools to manage Android devices would be better than Apple's. Google has been very school friendly as of late.

 

[goodcooper]

excellent information wizdum, thanks

 

[wizdum]

I forgot to mention Apple Configurator. Thats a decent method to "pre-load" the devices, since you don't have too many. It requires you to plug each iPad into a Mac, one at a time, but it works.

If you have any more questions, let me know. We're getting ready to replace all the iPads at the high schools with ChromeBooks, and move all the iPads down to the lower grades.

 

[markwo]

(Note: it's been about 12-18 months since I've worked closely with managing iPads, so my info is hopefully out of date and the situation has improved)

Chromebooks took me about 10% of the time to manage as do iPads, despite us having 10x more of them.

Chromebooks with the management console license (an extra $30 per machine for education) make management pretty easy.

I haven't used JAMF's Casper for iPad management, so maybe it's not Apples to Apples, but I believe that costs way more.

I can say that managing iPads with Apple Configurator was nothing short of a pain in the ass. Every new release of iOS, every new release of Configurator brought some random bug and pain point. Half the time, configurator had the featureset and capability to do what we want it to do, it just simply didn't work right.

The iOS7 release was especially awesome - the iPad constantly harasses users to upgrade to the latest version, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Upgrading to iOS7 automatically broke the configuration profile, along with it the students' restrictions. Apple loves bragging about the newest iOS saturation rate - management be damned. You'll upgrade when they tell you to, and you'll deal with whatever they decide to change or break because you simply have no choice.

All of that aside, for 3 and 4 year olds - I think iPads are going to be the more user friendly choice.

 

[goodcooper]

I forgot to mention Apple Configurator. Thats a decent method to "pre-load" the devices, since you don't have too many. It requires you to plug each iPad into a Mac, one at a time, but it works.

If you have any more questions, let me know. We're getting ready to replace all the iPads at the high schools with ChromeBooks, and move all the iPads down to the lower grades.

Mac only?

 

[wizdum]

I haven't used JAMF's Casper for iPad management, so maybe it's not Apples to Apples, but I believe that costs way more.

I can't say exactly how much Casper costs, but i'll put it this way. The state offered to loan us ~1,000 iPads for free if we paid for the Casper management. We decided to buy our own iPads retail, and forgo the management.

We're also having the same experience with the Chromebooks. Google just keeps knocking it out of the park while Apple falls farther behind. If you shop around and plan to buy large numbers, we have gotten sub $20/device quotes for the Chromebook management licenses.

The longest part of the Chromebook enrollment process was removing the damn shipping plastic from the screen and body of the devices. Both Dell and Acer just came out with ruggedized Chromebooks specifically for schools.

Mac only?

Yes, Apple Configurator only runs on a Mac, and only "manages" Apple devices.


I can't say if if iPads would be a better choice or easier for young children to use. I do know that we saw an entire generation that could barely type 10 words per minute after we decided to roll out iPads k-12.

 

[Lethal]

I have to wonder whether 3-4 might be a bit early to start. At that age, they don't know how to treat delicate electronic devices and are prone to dropping and abusing them.

But to get back on topic, I'd think durability is your most important factor. Can they be tethered to alleviate potential damage?

Lock them down. They only need access to a few educational programs. Make it so they can't pound away and accidentally do something unintended.

 

[Nate7311]

I can't say if if iPads would be a better choice or easier for young children to use. I do know that we saw an entire generation that could barely type 10 words per minute after we decided to roll out iPads k-12.

On a personal note, I question the wizdum D See what I did there?) of this as well. Many schools have officially dropped teaching cursive beyond signing your own name. How long before we see a generation that can't type and can't write?

 

[SamirD]

It's a pretty scary idea to know the next generation won't be able to write. But hey, in the scifi movies, the super-intelligen aliens don't write either, hehe.

As far as a child-proof tablet, we gave a Nabi Jr to one of our close friends' little girl when she was just over a year old. After six months on it, she went from just making sounds to singing her whole abcs, identifying animals and trying to talk. It's nice that it's also android based and ruggedized, so it should be able to be managed somehow and still be durable enough for regular kid use.

But I think tablets need to stay out of the education arena--that's why there's teachers. Otherwise, you can pack these kids into a daycare with a babysitter and get the same results. Teachers need to TEACH.

 

[goodcooper]

And to be clear, the place of tablets in our early childhood curriculum is not the point of the thread, and quite frankly, none of my business

 

[SamirD]

And to be clear, the place of tablets in our early childhood curriculum is not the point of the thread, and quite frankly, none of my business

Agreed, but you were bound to get some opinions on the topic flying since it is a bit of a unique topic.

Hopefully you got enough technical feedback to do what is needed.

 

[thedocta45]

Chromebooks took me about 10% of the time to manage as do iPads, despite us having 10x more of them.

Chromebooks with the management console license (an extra $30 per machine for education) make management pretty easy.

I can confirm that the Chrome management console is amazingly simple and I would recommend going down that line, they are really pushing education, my enterprise licensing is twice the cost.