iPads and your files in a multiuser environment

iPads are super awesome devices. They have a reputation for being content consumption devices, but they are serious content creation devices, too. Expect students to use them to create powerful content. From their inception, iPads were designed as personal devices. They are typically used by single individuals in a 'single user', personal way or by students in a one to one school with an iPad program like the junior high's. Users typically take pictures, capture video, load apps, subscribe to content, game, learn and enjoy the iPad experience without a lot of worry about someone else picking up their iPad and accessing personal information or worse, deleting important content.

 EWG is deploying some iPads in a multiuser environment where that 'personal device' paradigm doesn't exist. Here's a scenario that is about to replay over and over. A student or teacher might sign out an iPad from the library or lab, create content through a really powerful program such as Explain Everything, or capture video and images for use in a digital story. At the end of a block, the student or teacher returns the iPad to the cart. The very next block, or perhaps the next day, another learner signs out the same iPad. Where does the first user's content end up? Is it stuck on the iPad? What prevents the second or any subsequent user from accidentally - or maliciously - deleting great content? How can the loss of users' content and angry students and teachers be prevented?

Google Drive to the rescue. You can use Google Drive to quickly and easily backup the vast majority of your iPad content. It takes a few seconds to sign in, a few seconds (ok, a few minutes for gigantic projects) to send content to drive, and a few seconds to sign out of Google Drive. Before you start a project with your students on shared, multiuser iPads, please familiarize yourself (practice) and your students with the steps to send projects to Google Drive. You'll be happier, your students will be happier, and we'll have pulled a fast one on the tech gremlins.

An additional bonus of backing up iPad content to Google Drive makes it possible for a wide array of devices to access the content. For example, students might capture video and images with iPads for a sueded video project, and then edit the video on their Chromebooks or on an iMac in the television studio. And, many other iPad apps will let you backup content directly to Google Drive.

The video below provides a brief demonstration of how to sign in to and sign out of Google Drive on an iPad. Sending photos taken with the iPad to your Google Drive is also shown, and is representative of the process one might use with other iPad apps.