School IPad Policy (AUP) - can they make me sign?

sosleepy

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Has anyone any advice. Childs school has updated their AUP policy and refuses to let kids use them unless we sign...I agree with all 8 pages of it apart from when they made kids delete all personal apps from iPad saying not enough space for course books. We as a family use the iPad in the evenings.

We are being bullied into signing this now - the bits I don't agree with are in bold. This is the 3rd year in and as all course books are on the iPad we are being held over a barrel. We were not told 3 years ago that once we buy these iPads that they have control over what is stored on them. I have taken it up with the school and they saying we can install apps at night but must be deleted by the morning as the memory will be limited. Only want facebook, instagram & Netflix. On the website of the company who handle the software installation they state children can install their own apps. Any advice appreciated..!

Parents are responsible for purchasing the iPad ..... Parents retain ownership and possession of the iPad and grant to teachers and school management the right to collect, inspect or confiscate the iPad at any time and the right to alter, add or delete installed software or hardware.

Only school approved apps may be downloaded on the iPad
 
it's your property, not the schools. I can understand why the school would want to restrict apps on the ipad so to stop kids being on facebook etc when they are in class but at the end of the day I can't see what right they have to delete software and data from something they don't own. I'd be more worried about them adding software without your approval.
 
It's a shame the school don't seem to know how to use an iPad and the other facilities Apple make available to their customers.

On the Home Screen, tap Settings, tap General, tap Restrictions. Enter the PassCode. If you enable Restrictions, you can make a list of apps that are allowed, as well as tweaking the ALLOWED CONTENT, PRIVACY, ALLOW CHANGES & GAME CENTER [sic] settings. Naturally the passcode must be kept secret from Junior.

What does this allow you to do? When Junior heads to school, delete the entries for the apps the school has a problem with from the ALLOW list. They now cannot be accessed during school hours. Back-up data associated with these apps to your iCloud account (5 GB free from Apple) or PC/Mac. When Junior comes home, reverse the process to have a family iPad. What capacity are the iPads BTW?

From the nice people at Apple:- https://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT201304
 
P.S. You can of course also download free a full iOS / iPad / iPhone handbook or manual from your free iBooks account

You can also expand the storage capacity of your iPad / iPhone with one of these:-





NB I am not promoting Littlewoods or the specific device, they are a sample supplier of a sample device; there are other suppliers and other devices.

some more examples
 
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Has anyone any advice. Childs school has updated their AUP policy and refuses to let kids use them unless we sign...I agree with all 8 pages of it apart from when they made kids delete all personal apps from iPad saying not enough space for course books. We as a family use the iPad in the evenings.

Personally I don't see a problem with this policy. The iPad has been purchased primarily for use by your child for their school work. I assume it's the basic 16 gb model. If so then this will have limited space by the time you load essential school apps and school books. Therefore I can fully understand why the teachers don't want the responsible for having to remove your content in order to add more school content.

If you want something to play with in the evenings, then when don't you purchase another one for home use. We have one dedicated iPad for home use only and two iPhone's for our own use.
 
...I agree with all 8 pages of it apart from when they made kids delete all personal apps from iPad saying not enough space for course books... Only want facebook, instagram & Netflix.
The latest Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix apps are 95.2 MB, 21.7 MB and 19.0 MB respectively. In total that's less than 1% of a 16 GB iPad. Anyone who says that's not going to leave enough space for course books, I'd question if they know what they're talking about.
 
The more salient point is probably that having "non-school" stuff on it makes the kids more likely to mess and be distracted by it. The memory capacity stuff may be a smokescreen.

I'd also be concerned that the school end up viewing you as "problem parents" who are essentially causing trouble over something minor and that human nature being what it is that results in your kid(s) suffering.

The school policy is reasonable in my view.
 
Thank you all.

Gordon I don't want to be a "problem parent" - I don't want to be bullied into signing what is essentially a contract as I was told that if I sign this form and child has an app on it she will be punished accordingly. The purchase of this put extreme financial pressure on the family at the time and it was not stated how they will control it. We would like to use it an odd evening instead of using our phones for certain apps - at the end of a working day nice to use a larger screen!

The iPad is 16gb and I have checked memory and what is available after all coursework and operating systems and find there is plenty of GB free and I only want to use approx. 200mb! I would not dream of loading tons of software on if there was not enough space for education apps. I have reviewed the policies of other schools and they are allowed install their own apps once there is enough space and that the students are not using them during school hours (although these and blocked from the network).


I also am not happy giving the right to someone else to add, amend, delete anything from it unless I am phoned or would be present while it is done to make sure it was done safely and would not damage the device - as we are responsible if anything happens to the device!

thank you will get one of these also as will be handy!
 
The more salient point is probably that having "non-school" stuff on it makes the kids more likely to mess and be distracted by it. The memory capacity stuff may be a smokescreen.

The school policy is reasonable in my view.

Agree 100% with above.

I look at this very simply as follows: Technology is an advance on school books in the modern era. The technology was bought for school use. I don't think parents would write on children's school books (not literally the same or not directly comparable obviously, but you get what I mean - the ipad is really another 'school book' sotospeak, a device/means for teaching, learning and recording info).

I fully appreciate the financial cost you are saying and that it can add pressure. Schools/Parents Councils can and should do more to help on this (e.g. lining up a company to allow parents to lease the ipad). I don't see why it has to be an ipad frankly, there are much cheaper alternatives available.

Better to keep school and home enjoyment separate. Would be impossible for the teachers to control the class. And it would be unreasonable to expect teachers or the school to have to talk to 25-30 parents each day, if all kids/parents adopted this approach. Sorry not meaning to be harsh, just facts of school life. Hard enough job as it is for teachers.
 
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My daughter's best friend is now in JC year and on her third year of the school iPad. At parent teacher meetings the use of the iPad always comes up. Some of the teachers have issues with the pupils being on apps while in class.
Both my son and daughter are in schools which are progressive in IT terms. So far they have declined to introduce iPads in place of school books.
 
mathepac above already outlined how restrictions can be used to keep home and school stuff separate. This can also be used to control the installing of apps. There are also apps like iUser to create separate accounts for different users. I can see how the school would not want to become the IT support desk for non-tech-savvy people trying to do this stuff. But to be honest, if you know what you're doing, I'd just go ahead and set the restrictions and let the school be none the wiser. An iPad is an expensive device to be letting them dictate what you can and can't do with it.
 
The latest Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix apps are 95.2 MB, 21.7 MB and 19.0 MB respectively. In total that's less than 1% of a 16 GB iPad. Anyone who says that's not going to leave enough space for course books, I'd question if they know what they're talking about.

It's not the Apps that are the problem. It's the associated media files such as music, videos, pdf's, word processing documents that take up most of the space. Also every time Apple update the operating system it eats more available memory. 16gb iPad's will soon be obsolete and the basic model will start at 32gb or 64gb. And yes I do know what I'm talking about! I've been using Apple products for years.
 
Netflix is a streaming-only service, so there are no associated offline files. Likewise for Facebook. Instagram is for photos. The policy referred to by the OP doesn't say you can't take photos with the iPad, so no additional overhead there. Whatever the school's gripe about these apps, it's not (sensibly) about space.

My old 16 GB iPad has every college book, assignment, and lecture note from a four-year degree course in physics, plus many dozens of other books on it, and the combined total is about 10% of the iPad capacity. Books simply don't use that much space -- it's a complete red herring. My TomTom satnav app for the US and Canada uses more space than all those books combined.
 
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Bad use of the word 'bullied', hardly the case, it's thrown around far too much and will end up losing it's effectiveness if it's used for any little disagreement.
 
... to teachers and school management the right to collect, inspect or confiscate the iPad at any time and the right to alter, add or delete installed software or hardware.

I too have issue with this portion of the policy. If the school feel the need for this level of control, why not rent the iPads to parents and retain ownership themselves? That way they can inspect, install, delete, confiscate and update content to their hearts' content as they are messing with their own property, otherwise, hands off, it's private.

It should never have reached this stage, not if they knew how to deploy technology using the technology to help.
 
The more salient point is probably that having "non-school" stuff on it makes the kids more likely to mess and be distracted by it. The memory capacity stuff may be a smokescreen..
Not if access to the non-school stuff is disabled during school hours. I agree that the internal storage capacity is a red-herring, therefore the wording in question is unreasonable IMO.
 
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