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Rollout of iPads to all LA district school students may be delayed after kids bypass restrictions

ipads-education

The LA Times is reporting that the distribution of iPads to all 640,000 students in the LA school district may be temporarily halted after high school pupils worked out how to bypass the restrictions placed on the devices. Apple announced back in June that an initial start to the rollout was worth $30M.

While the school networks block apps such as facebook while at school, a personal profile was used to limit usage of the devices when taken home. Within a week, children at Theodore Roosevelt High School had worked out that deleting this profile removed the restrictions … 

As a temporary measure, schools have banned use of the iPads at home.

Seems to me decent evidence that the iPads are helping students develop their IT skills …

Via Engadget

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Comments

  1. Kyle Sus (@Hawk_Ky) - 10 years ago

    Unfortunately the problem here is MDM support within iOS, or the lack of support. Currently there is no way to block access to management profiles on iOS devices, so anyone can go in and delete them (as seen here). Since iOS 7 was just released, I doubt these iPads were running the new system, so we don’t know if any of these problems are alleviated with the new management revisions in iOS 7.

    • Awax (@Awax) - 10 years ago

      This was added in iOS7.

    • Jeffrey Bonacci - 10 years ago

      you are absolutely incorrect about that. We have been using managed profiles since iOS 5 – and it absolutely DOES allow for password protection so you can disallow users from uninstalling the profile. They probably just didn’t know it existed.

      • Mickey Hancharenko - 10 years ago

        Apple Configurator stores that password in plain text in the configuration.xml file that it generates. I’d imagine that the password could likely be exposed with a utility like iExplorer. While I can’t say that this is the case once the profile is on the device, but the .mobileconfig file with the removal password for the profile should never leave the hands of an administrator managing the devices.

    • Ron Brown (@brownron) - 10 years ago

      Adding a password to remove a profile has been around since iOS6. Our district has a passcode on all our profiles. The one Apple needs to allow a passcode on is the MDM profile itself…

  2. Awax (@Awax) - 10 years ago

    This is fixed in iOS7

  3. Scott D. Brown (@hwdyb) - 10 years ago

    I see this as a good thing. There are thousands of high school aged developers out there, so not too shocking that they found a work-a-round. Now if this was done by elementary aged kids, that would be awesome!
    Keep hacking kids!

  4. lee scott (@SkolVikes88) - 10 years ago

    Also, how do we know the “kids” did this? What about older siblings or parents? I’d wager that’s what happened to most of these…but yes, iOS 7 seems better geared for this. Also, there’s software like Casper Suite that does way more than the Apple tools.

  5. Gregory Wright - 10 years ago

    So, the kid took his iPad home and his older brother showed him how to avoid the restrictions. I didn’t see that coming.

  6. NQZ (@surgesoda) - 10 years ago

    This is pretty cool…I hope they figure out a way around the iOS 7 fix for this as well :) And who says kids are dumb…when they wanna figure something out they will.

  7. Cathy Landry - 10 years ago

    I work for LAUSD. I am a HUGE Apple fan and user…I have family members who work for Apple. Encouraging Apple sales would line the pockets of people I love who own shares in Apple. You would think I’d be the biggest proponent… All I have to say is that this deployment is a huge mistake. It is yet another example of the District moving on some great idea before properly weighing the options and developing a plan. There’s an easy fix to this problem, even pre-IOS7-yet LAUSD is a huge bureaucracy of well-intended but poorly organized pencil-pushers who really have no clue about the day-to-day operations of schools; it takes an act of God to move on things requiring urgency, yet some decisions are made on the fly. You never know.

    I love the comment Gregory W made….duh. Didn’t see this coming. Any moron could have foreseen any number of problems…but the District does before thinking most of the time so it is par for the course… The devices are really for testing…that’s that. The kids will be able to take the new state tests. No one really cares that the staff, network capabilities, etc. are not ready…

    I’ll just sit back and watch this one play out.

  8. Jomy Muttathil - 10 years ago

    They should have a system where homework has to be completed first and then a limited amount of personal activity can be done on the iPad before it deactivates at bed time.

  9. Justin Tennenbaum - 10 years ago

    I go to a high school in Lewisville ISD, in Texas, where iPads are currently being distributed to the 50,000 or so students within the district. It took me less than an hour to remove the restrictions that were placed on the device. They were only downloaded profiles that weren’t even locked. The district is obviously not as smart as they think. This is something that could have easily been fixed.

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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