I have a cart of 20 supervised ipads connected to the apple configurator tool. I just purchased 20 ibooks through the vpp store but it seems the configurator cannot handle ibooks. So what is the best way to get the ibook onto all 20 ipads using the vpp redemption codes?
iPad 2, iOS 5.1.1
If studnts under 12 have their own Apple ID on their device can I connect their device to Mac computer to download an ibook using configurator? Then revoke it after a period of time?
I am a K-6 librarian and I am looking at starting a digital collection and hoping to use iBooks.
The end user license agreement for iBooks purchased through the vpp is for each redeem code to be assigned to an individual apple id. Legally you need to sign into each ipad into the iBookstore with a separate apple id and download the book on each one individually. You can also do it through iTunes and transfer via USB. If these are for students you can create an apple id for each student if they do not have one. They must be at least 13years of age.
The problem is that they are supervised though the Apple Configurator. So I am not sure if you can do this. Supervision somehow seems to tie the ipads to the apple id of the machine you are using to manage them.
Apps work fine with the configurator, but it does not seem to support books. Since the ipads are Supervised I need to find a way to get ibooks on them.
Our high school iPads are supervised by configurator as well, and our iBooks textbooks are assigned to individual student apple ids, as is legally required, and they sign into the iBook store with their id and redeem the vpp code we provide them to download and install the iBook.
Are you sure you actully supervised them, or just prepared them in the configurator? I swear when I tried this before it warned me about swtiching itunes accounts within 90 days....
I could try this again, but since this is a cart and the students are in lower school, I would have to create 20 new apple id's in order to do it this way.
Is there really no easier way? Seems pretty ridiculous. If I had mutliple carts you can imagine how many apple id's I would have to create.
The issue you need to be aware of is the licensing terms when purchasing iBooks through the vpp store.
One code per apple id.
Here is a blog post that summarizes the situation:
iBooks Textbooks - If you are looking at iBooks for EDU I would caution you again to look at the TOS for Volume Purchase of iBooks for EDU, specifically the part where it says that your students retain ownership of the books and must create AppleIDs to redeem VPP codes for books, it also means that kids under 13 currently can not use iBook textbooks as the TOS forbid anyone under this age to create an AppleID, something you will run in to if you are a K-6 This is the exact opposite of VPP codes for Apps that require you to retain control of Apps on institutional AppleIDs and the Apps can be reused as long as the number of installed copies of the App does not exceed the number of VPP codes you have. What this really means though is that if you were thinking of purchasing one set of digital textbooks and reusing them with a grade level/class, you currently can not do this as the book belongs to the student not the school according to the new VPP
Yeah, that is what I was afraid of.
Ok with that being the case, what are schools doing for ebooks when they use a supervised cart model in lower grades? Is their another option besides the ibook store?
I had though of using Amazon or Barnes and Noble, but they don't seem to sell volume copies either.
There must be someway that schools are doing this even if they use a different source for their books that apple?
So, to confirm:
Even with separately-purchased licenses (or, for that matter, free books from the public domain there is no way to use Apple Configurator to put these books onto iPads?
Correct,
The configurator DOES NOT handle ANY ebooks or ibooks.
Worse, is that there is NO OTHER way to use ibooks on a supervised cart.
No, there is not. If a teacher wishes to have students use a free ibook we have the students download the book using their apple id. For younger students with no id this is a manual process (unfortunately) for the teacher and/or IT department. Depending on how advanced your school library is, and where they obtain their collection, you may be able to check books in and out of your devices from the school library.
Wow! I know this is an old post but wish I had read this before I had just bought £40 worth of now completely useless books, THANKS APPLE!! What a great idea sell bulk books through the VPP and then give the user NO WAY of putting them onto the iPads! That makes perfect sense in the apple world obviously! We have 80 iPads here in the primary school I work and they are all supervised and have the same apple ID. As they are all under 13 in school I cannot create them separate apple IDs so now I have 10 licenses for books that cannot be used so that is great! If anyone has a way of doing so legally I would REALLY appreciate it as otherwise that is £40 down the toilet..
Legally - according to the TOS no, But with my apple systems engineer and our sales rep at the time aware of what we were doing. We purchased and installed them via the app store on the iPad AFTER preparing them and supervising them.
BE aware that this is not something that can then be backed up and restored - it simply won't work, so if you erase the iPads over the summer. You may run out of options of reinstalling the books. (Incidentally we have since discontinued using the book because the textbook was NOT what was demonstrated to us by the publisher. (it was great, but it wasn't capable of the integration that the salesperson demonstrated with the publishers website. Lesson learned.)
How to add ibooks to supervised iPads
