iPads as shared devices

One of the problems I face on a daily basis has to do with monitoring the use of the iPads on my cart.
So, first of all, as a BYOD school, it may be surprising to some how often students rely on the iPads in my cart.  Students come to school with dead devices, devices that don't work well or at all, or that are so slow as to be more problem than they are worth. These students use the iPad assigned to them.

When I give a test or quiz, I have them use the iPads because I can monitor test security using Apple Classroom. This has cut down on the cheating that I knew was happening when taking a quiz on a device.

But my problem centers on the shared aspects of a device that's not meant to be shared. Students who use Canvas on the iPads frequently do not log out, and they are not automatically timed out. This means that the next student who uses that device might accidentally access someone else's account.

The same problem exists for anything Google related. When they access their Google Drive account, they do not log out, and the next student who uses that account  may not realize they are not logged in.

Typical scenarios are:
  • Student takes a quiz in Canvas and sees that they already have a score because the person in the class before them took it in the wrong account. 
Randomly Selected iPad from Cart shows student still logged in to Canvas.


  • Students download a Google Doc but it goes into another student's account because they didn't log out.
Randomly Selected iPad from Cart shows student logged into Google Slides.
  • Students try to find a document they are certain is in their files, but it is missing. Possibly because they downloaded it into the wrong account.
  • Error messages in Canvas when they try to access a Google Doc because someone else is logged into Google Docs or Drive.
These are the things that drive me crazy as I try to use technology.

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