I know quite a few teachers who own iPads (or iPad minis.) There are lots of great iPad apps for use in the classroom, but not all of us have access to school iPads. So, of course, some teachers opt to use our personal devices to bridge the gap.
There are lots of people out there who would never hand over their personal smartphone or tablet to a student. You’re just asking for trouble. The problem, of course, is that our iPads contain a lot of personal information that you don’t want your students rifling through: your contacts, emails, photos… Heck, you probably don’t want them flipping through your recently viewed movies on Netflix.
But there are lots of great reasons to use an iPad in the classroom: make a movie, create a stop motion animation, access accessibility features like voice over, or use a voice recording app so the student can demonstrate their understanding while drawing on the iPad. Some of us are brave (or crazy) enough to hand over our own personal devices to our students to use in the classroom.
Unfortunately, Apple iOS doesn’t allow us to have multiple user accounts which means there’s one single user account on your iPad for teachers, family members, students, etc. This is one of the biggest downsides to having iPads in the classroom: multi-user management doesn’t exist which means if you’re a teacher and you’re letting a student in your class use your own personal device, you run the risk of having students mess around with your stuff.
There is a buried feature in iOS 6 that lets you lock your iPad to a specific app. You can disable all of the hardware buttons, the home button, and even parts of the touch screen so that a student can only use a specific app and not access your personal stuff.
A friend of mine recently showed me this trick at school, and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to find it. (How long has it been since iOS 6 came out?)
Guided Access lets you lock down your iPad so a student can only access one app. According to the Apple website, it’s designed to help students with disabilities (i.e. autism) remain on task and focused on content.
In reality, Guided Access is something that every teacher who uses an iPad in the classroom should know about.
