For Your Sanity, a Tutorial For iPad

One of the things I taught in my workshop this week was how to restrict students from accessing inappropriate content on your iPad. One of my absolute favorite tricks for locking down the iPad is to put it into "Guided Access" mode. Guided Access allows you to lock the app to prevent students from exiting out and doing something they're not supposed to be doing. It's really purposeful in kindergarten and the early grades. The upper grades can probably get around it, but you can safeguard it again by entering a passcode they have to know in order to exit. It's almost foolproof. FYI- you must currently be running IOS 6 or higher to have this feature. If you don't see it you'll need to apply the update. Here's the tutorial.

1) Select the "Settings" icon on the home screen
2) Under "Settings" click on the “General” icon in the menu on the left 

 3) Scroll down until you see "Accessibility" about 3/4 of the way down the screen. Click on it.
4) At the top of the screen you will see "Guided Access". Make sure the button is slid so that it reads "ON".

Notice that it has an option for "Set Passcode" underneath. If you truly want to safeguard your iPad you will need to select that and enter a 4 digit passcode. That way if your kids, who are way smarter than you are when it comes to these things, figure out how to disable the guided access, they'll still have to enter a passcode to truly disable. It just adds another layer of protection.
5) Exit out and you're ready to go.
6) Open the app you want your students to use. Once open, triple click the home button at the bottom of the iPad. Your screen will shrink and look like this:

Notice that there is a blue button at the top right that says "Start". Click on that button and Guided Access will begin. Now your students are locked into the app and cannot exit until you disable it. When you're ready to disable and move on simply triple click the home button again. If you've chosen to add a passcode option you will enter it then. Then choose the button in the top left that says "End" and Guided Access will end and allow you to exit out.

Easy peasey lemon squeezy!