Monday, March 26, 2012

How on earth do you...?

There is a question buzzing about my team wondering how to securely accept and respond to student work using iPads.  Currently, we have 54 students sharing a cart of 20 iPads for use with 4 different teachers.  I've begged and pleaded for a 1:1 program, but it isn't going to happen, at least not this year.  So, we're left to find another option.

Currently, we have one generic gmail account to which all twenty iPads are connected.  That means that students may email us their assignments.  However, should we respond, we would potentially tell the entire class the grade for that student. 

How do you do it in your school?

We have considered giving all students a gmail account and they log in to that account when they pick up the iPad.  That doesn't work because switching the account through settings is not password protected.

We have considered having kids log on to gmail through Safari and sending us emails that way, but not every app gives you that flexibility.  I'm sure that you've noticed that a number of apps will just send the product off using the "logged into" account. So, this won't work.

Our IT department is playing around with Google Apps for Education, but they aren't ready to roll it out to everyone yet.  I'm not sure if that will answer our question.

I think I'm at the point where I'll accept something emailed to me from the generic email account, type my response, and print a hard copy of the response to send home.  It's not perfect, and I'd love to be paperless on this... but I can't think of a better way.

Can you?

What do you do in your school?

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