As the media specialist in my building, I am expected to know a number of tips and tricks, especially to help my 8th grade students who started a 1:1 program this year. Here are a few things I've learned about iPads, especially with iOS 7.
1. Hard resets are your best friend! A hard reset is more than just turning the device off and on. It resets the settings on the iPad, and we find that it solves about 90% of the issues our kids have with devices (after we close apps, restart apps, and try the basic troubleshoots). Hard resetting is as simple as holding down the home and sleep buttons simultaneously until the Apple logo shows up, and then letting go. No data is lost.....settings are just reset. We ask kids to try the basic troubleshoots first, and then we use this one.
2. Need a fast charge? Put the iPad in airplane mode. This automatically disables wi-fi and bluetooth, so the device doesn't waste energy looking for devices or networks. When our kids run out of battery during the day, this works very well.
3. Battery lifesavers? Close out apps, turn off parallax mode (animations), turn down brightness, set the auto-lock to two minutes...and don't have apps running that are always out there crawling.
4. In my opinion, the best feature about iOS 7 is the control center on the device. I love that volume and brightness are a swipe away, and the Airdrop feature is AWESOME! I use it often to share pics with co-workers, or even with my son or my iPhone. AirPlay was available with iOS 6, but is much easier for teachers to access with iOS 7 in the control center, and we are choosing to use this feature to project in many of our classrooms now.
5. Automatic updates are AWESOME!!! My students have turned on automatic app updates in the app store and it has saved us so much administrative time in having to touch and update devices. I'm encouraging staff to do this as well, because some of them don't come to us for updates and end up with problems because they are using outdated apps. This does use some battery, but I think the benefits definitely outweigh the costs.
Great post....folks love to hear what works in the trenches with managing lots of mobile devices, so thanks for sharing. I am really glad to see you are in this program....hope it provides some fun too!
ReplyDeleteThanks Patricia! In the trenches for sure.......starting to panic about doubling the number of 1:1 devices for next year. Being a "pioneer" is exciting, and VERY challenging at the same time.
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