Friday, February 24, 2012

iPad - Five tips for making an image

I want to talk images today. Using an image is a great way to mirror all the iPads in a traveling pack or cart. It's pretty simple to do, you just have to make sure you allot time to tweek the image to make sure it includes everything you want. There are several tools you can use to make sure your image is perfect. Here are some tips for you.

1. You can put six apps in the dock (the bottom of the screen that stays the same on every page). This is a great place to keep readily used apps.
2. You can create folders. Press and hold an app until they all start wiggling. Then pick up and drag one app on top of another. You have just created a folder! 20 apps fit in a folder
3. Create web shortcuts for easy navigation. In Safari, choose the action arrow button and select "add to home screen". This creates a shortcut that looks like an app. Name it whatever you want and move it in folders or on the dock. Great for finding popular sites quickly.
4. Organize apps on the pages. You can create new pages and sort in whatever fashion you want. For our elementary carts, we chose to sort by content. We didn't go by grade because many apps fit for multiple age groups.
5. Add a background image. Import an image file to serve as your background. You can use different images to number the iPads so it's easy to see which device you are using. Add your school logo or student picture if you want to personalize.

That's a few tips for getting a good image started. Once you have it chosen, then you'll need to deploy the image to the other iPads. Essentially, all you will do is back up that master iPad to your iTunes or iCloud account. Then for each new iPad, you will "restore to backup". That will put the exact same image on every iPad in your cart.

Hope that helps you get started. Next time, I'll talk about configuration profiles. If you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know @mattvillasana

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