What is Apple School Manager?
It comprises core deployment services and support of additional in class tools for effective device roll out and implement of teaching and learning practices. Previous to the release of Apple School Manager these services either didn’t exist, for managed ID’s or completely segregated for each institution.
Device Users
Apple School Manager will be include different users from pupils, teaching staff and also those with administrator privileges, it should be devolved to allow teachers to reset forgotten passwords, IT technical to manage the links between ASM and device management and pupils to securely.
A managed Apple ID allows a school account to access iCloud storage but does not permit access to iTunes or purchasing function. It also assists in the bulk creation of accounts, skips the verification process and assigns them to classes and rosters.
A managed Apple provides a number of benefits, for those faculty and pupils it ensure that the content is centrally provisioned, managed and even has the ability for certain service administrators to inspect the contents of the account. This often assists in esafety and child protection incidents.
However one of the more notable features of a managed Apple ID is the ability to onboard pupils quickly and easily and to ensure that their school or university work remains separate to that of their personal work, It also provides schools and colleges to use the Apple Classroom bolt on feature for in class management. A managed Apple ID has the benefit of unlimited iCloud storage unlike the default consumer storage option of 5gb free, and to increase requires a monthly financial commitment. Not feasible when this is multiplied out in a school or for a parent contribution.
Some key things that you can’t use a managed Apple ID for; purchasing apps – there is no App Store function so a user, especially those younger pupils cause use this to purchase the app store. No FaceTime or iMessage – this is also an important child protection feature, the pupil can not use their Managed Apple ID to connect with other Apple ID’s.
Device Ownership
Apple School Manager does not provide the ability to manage device settings or functions, for this an institution would require a featured Mobile Device Management service, we’ll discuss these in a later post.
What it does provide is increased security for the institutions purchase of devices, allowing to be securely linked to their chosen MDM platform, this automatically enrolls the device to a enrollment group of devices, locks down the device with the required security settings, installs wifi profiles and can install other configuration payloads all automatically. This preparation and setup of the device by simply switching it on is called Over The Air configuration. This greatly reduces resources when deploying a couple of hundred devices.
It also provides a permanent ownership for that device, linked to the institution that purchased the device. In a school that utilised parental contribution to support the iPad program at the outset, the device can be retired and become a every day consumer device that is no longer linked to the school.
Device Content
Assigning apps used to be based on voucher codes that had to be redeemed against a consumer Apple ID. Once redeemed, just like an iTunes voucher, the school would lose the cost of that app. It not only caused a financial burden for the school but also a logistically nightmare for deployment as all device owners would have to have a functioning consumer Apple ID. The turnaround time from initial order placing to fulfillment could have taken a number of days or even a week depending on the supplier.
Apps and Books can now be purchased within Apple School manager, they sit in a central repository that the MDM will then pull from and assign to individual devices or groups of devices not users. Even better is that they can be assigned and revoked over and over again. Allowing a school to have saved financially.
As they are assigned to the device the user no longer has to manually install these from the App Store. The devices will always be classroom ready.
Some schools only use this method for their paid for apps, however it should be completed with all free and paid for content.