Keeping Control over iPad

Laurent Ades

iPad in Education

So, your child’s school has deployed and iPad Learning Program and you are now faced with questions such as:

Will I have a say on what my child can do on this device?

What if I don’t want them playing games at certain times?

What if I feel it can become an excuse for actually not doing school work?

What if I feel I need to access the device and review its content?

You may even have more questions but they certainly all come down to the same matter:

As a parent, how do I keep control over this mobile device in our home?

As an Education Partner, Paoma strives to help your child’s school succeed with Technology in Learning Environments and we understand that Parents are part of this journey. A key contributing factor to this success is giving you the Power to Decide how this device should be used outside of school.

Mobile Device Management [MDM]

The rise of Mobile Phones and Tablets comes with Remote Management challenges which our industry is solving with a technology called Mobile Device Management or MDM.

Essentially, MDM’s work as follow:

The School sets up an online management tool: the actual MDM platform.

Devices - such as iPad - used in the School’s digital learning program are enrolled in this platform by loading a profile on them before they are handed out to students.

As long as the device is connected to the Internet, remote control and management is possible along the following lines:

Systems Settings can be applied to keep devices consistent across the school

System Restrictions can be enabled or disabled according to policies

Apps can be Deployed Remotely by the school without an active App Store account on the device

Apps can be Enabled orDisabled on demand or on a scheduled basis

The MDM used by your child’s school is called JAMF School.

Everything happens remotely over the Internet and no personal content can be accessed: Privacy is kept at all times.

How does that help Parents?

Surely this sounds useful but how can you, as a Parent, leverage this as a Parenting Tool?

The answer to this question lies in a parent-dedicated tool - called JAMF Parent - allowing you to manage your child’s device on your own terms. It can be accessed either from an iPhone/iPad app or from any Web Browser.

With your own individual access to JAMF Parents, you will be able to routinely perform the following Digital Parenting tasks:

Reset Device Pass Code

Apply Restrictions on entire App Store Categories such as Games, Social Media or Entertainment either on a Ad-Hoc basis or on a Recurring Schedule.

Apply a temporary Lock your child’s device on Specific Apps which your child can use in order to Avoid Distractions either on a Ad-Hoc basis or on a Recurring Schedule.

Keeping your child’s iPad enrolled in the MDM

As iPad is designed to be a personal device, it is technically possible for your child to remove the enrolment profile if he finds out how to perform this procedure. In such case, the device would become fully unmanaged as per matters mentioned earlier.

Should this take place, school IT administrators shall be automatically notified and shall advise both your child and you in order to remediate the situation.

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