Taming the Distractible iPad

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to best advise and support our students as they try to minimize distractions on their iPads.  In the Dana Hall Middle School, we have firm rules about using the iPads for school business.  They know they are not allowed on Social Media sites during the course of the day, and they should not be messaging and emailing their friends (or parents) in class. We know that not all students are able to stick to these rules, but we are being vigilant, moving around the classroom, keeping students engaged to minimize down time that is a pitfall for distractions. Students caught not following the rules are dealt with, and overall things have been good.  Parents seem to be having more difficulty at home, however. Students get more personal email and text messages outside of school hours and are accustomed to being less monitored.  Parents are wondering if their daughters are really spending that much time doing work, or if they are spending most of their time socializing and drawing out the homework process. Clearly parents and students need additional guidance in how to move forward.

There are really two ways to approach distractions:

The first is to give students the tools to restrict distractions on their own, showing students how to turn off distracting Apps or limit the way they push messages at them while they are working.  This approach is best in the long run as students feel more ownership over their device and their learning. Much of this is done in the Settings area of the iPad. iMessage and several other Apps can be toggled on and off. The Notification Center in Settings allows you to change alerts, Badges and Banners for a variety of Apps so messages and email seem less urgent. There is also a Do Not Disturb setting that can be set manually or for different times of the day to help limit when FaceTime calls and alerts are allowed.

The second approach is more restrictive and would allow parents to lock down less desirable features of their child's iPad. In my opinion, this works best for younger ages or for students who have struggled to set their own limits. 

Under the Settings, General you will find two different options that can be used to lock down features. The first is found under Accessibility, Guided Access.  It allows someone to set a passcode to lock into a particular App. This passcode is independent of the passcode used on the lock screen, so parents can choose a code unknown to their child. Many Apps depend on others so using this feature is tricky.  The student may need to write a paper in Pages for example and then submit it via Google Drive or Schoology and Guided Access may prevent her from turning in her work. This might be helpful, however to encourage her to spend a certain amount of time writing for example before being allowed to move on to other things.

The other General setting to consider is the Restrictions area where parents can turn restrictions on and set a passcode unknown by the student. (Please make note of what you use here as it may require a complete reset back to factory settings to get out of if the Passcode is forgotten.) There are several things that can be disabled in this feature.  You will notice that iMessage, which seems to be the largest thorn for our parents this year, does not show up in this list.  A quick Google search brought me to this a great work around from the website: e- Quipped at:   http://nccparentsplace.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/taming-imessage-a-parents-guide/

Restricting iMessage:
If restrictions are enabled you need to turn off restrictions before you can perform this procedure.

1.     Go to settings – messages
2.     Set “iMessage” to “off”
3.     Go to settings – general – restrictions
4.     Enable restrictions
5.     Under restriction settings go to “allow changes” – “Accounts”
6.     Select “Don’t Allow Changes”
7.     iMessage is now disabled

For any parent looking to restrict your child's iPad in this way, please be clear with them what your restricting and why. It would also be helpful for your school tech support to know what is restricted. I've found myself going around and around with students this year trying to help them figure out why their iPad was "broken" when it had been restricted by their parents without them knowing.   

For us at Dana Hall, it is important that students not be restricted from downloading or updating Apps as we ften find ourselves suggesting an App update to help fix a known bug. (This happens more often than I would like) Students also need email for school purposes, but parents can certainly limit their daughters to only use their school email address on their iPad and adjust notification settings so banners are not popping up when she's working in something else.

I worry about a strict lock down approach, as students need to eventually manage their own time and their is nothing that makes an otherwise dull activity seem more exciting than an outright ban of it. I can see the need, however, and the families right to make these decisions was part of our overall decision to have families buy their own iPads and not have them provided by the school.  I am hopeful that together we will be able to find the right path for each student.