iPad Challenge – Network Folder Access, is it Possible?
Great device, but how do I get files off my iPad and into my network folder?
Simply put, iPads are amazing devices. The sleek design, simple user interface, and abundance of quality apps make other tablets envious. The iPad has established itself as the device of choice whether you’re talking about education or general consumption. Arguments can be made for other devices, but it’s going to be hard to challenge the love affair education is having with the device. With this relationship surging forward into the foreseeable future, there are challenges to address in the field of education and other corporate environments. This brief article will hopefully help you find a solution for one of the most common problems with the iPad.
How do I get my stuff off?
1:1 is not a feasible option for most districts. In most scenarios students are sharing iPads between each other. For this reason, one of the biggest challenges a district faces when utilizing the iPad is finding a way for students to get their content off the device and into an alternate storage area. Many environments will point to an external cloud storage solution (iCloud, Dropbox, Box, etc.) as the answer, but what if you could allow students to save content directly to their network folders in your private cloud?
Wait… why not just use Dropbox , Box or iCloud?
Using an online cloud solution sounds great and works most of the time, but organizations run into limitations when content is offloaded to a 3rd party. Here is an outline of a few issues:
- You don’t technically own your content anymore
- There are storage limitations
- The student has to go through multiple steps to share content with a teacher
What are the benefits of using internal cloud storage?
- Teachers have easy access to student files for viewing and grading purposes
- Students own their content (okay, so the district actually owns it, but better than a 3rd party)
- Ability to have no storage limitations
- Upload any file type
- Files are always backed up (if your environment supports a backup solution)
How?
The short, using your favorite SFTP capable app (mine happens to be GoodReader), connect to a SFTP server that resides on your network. IPSWITCH has asolution called WS_FTP that would meet your needs with LDAP authentication, Active Directory integration, SSH, etc., but I’m sure there are other solutions out there as well. After your server is set up you can use LDAP authentication and replicate the same permissions used on your network folders. Connect to the SFTP server through GoodReader and voilà, easy access to your network folder. From here you can upload and download files straight from your iPad.
Alternatives
How does your district or corporate environment address this challenge? Does it make sense to have the ability to store student/employee files in your private cloud versus something like Dropbox? Do you see this challenge as something that even needs to be addressed?
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App Creation for Free!
*Update – 2/1/12
AppMakr has now moved to a paid platform if you don’t want advertisements. If you don’t mind ads being placed in your app it’s still a great platform to use, but I’ve come across a new mobile app development platform that warrants some serious consideration. Conduit Mobile is a robust and easy to use tool that allows for users to create their own apps seamlessly through the web. Had our current app not already been developed it would be a battle between Conduit and Appmakr to see who won. Having played around with Conduit a little bit I think they may have come out on top? This summer I’ll go back and review our current app, see how Conduit stacks up more in depth and make a decision from there. It’s great to see the competition occurring in this marketplace and the ease at which you can now create a mobile app. Did I mention Conduit Mobile is free?
This past summer I started a new job as the Network and Communication Specialist for my school district. One of the first things I wanted to do in my new role was facilitate better communication with our school district and community. The first thing that popped into my head was creating an app. I started doing some research in the Spring of 2011 on how I wanted to create this app. Six months later I am sitting here and we have released the app for our district! The process was filled with quite a bit of research, testing and fun, but seeing the final product is something I’m proud of for our ISD. The product is not perfect, but as you’ll see in the next few paragraphs you’ve got to be flexible when making your final decision. Below I’ll talk about some of the options I researched and share with you the good and the bad.
Free
First off, let me explain that I don’t have much experience in programming. I considered taking up Objective-C to write an iOS app, but thought I should do some research on services that allowed me to create an app without any programming experience. To my luck I found there are a variety of different services that help you create apps and many of them are free. When collaborating with our Public Information Coordinator, we decided that the main goal of the app was to bring together all of our information resources into one place. I ended up choosing a service called AppMakr. AppMakr is mainly based on RSS feeds, but also allows for some other options in the creation process. By using AppMakr we were able to pull all of the RSS feeds for our district (Facebook, Twitter, Calendars, …) into one location for quick and easy access. AppMakr ended up being the perfect choice for our needs. Oh yeah, did I mention that it’s free? Some of the other features we utilized from AppMakr included the ability to incorporate HTML/Phonegap pages, send push notifications, integrate custom images and headers, as well as rely on support through video tutorials and an online community. A couple of the drawbacks I’ve had with AppMakr is that their Android build service hasn’t worked well for me and I am still working on getting it to function properly. Also, it would be nice to have an interface where you could place the navigation in a grid as opposed to navigating from the bottom at all times. Although there are a few tweaks to work out, AppMakr is a wonderful service and I feel confident we picked the right tool for us right now.
Some other free (some of these are initially free and then you have to pay for certain services) alternatives I looked into, but ultimately decided not to go with were BigForge, iBuildApp, and appsbar. They all had a few things that AppMakr didn’t have, but on the whole just didn’t stack up as well.
Paid
There were a couple of options that I was strongly considering in the “paid-for” realm, but most of the time you have to pay an initial development fee, plus an ongoing service fee. Because AppMakr was free, from start to finish, we went with it. In the future, if we want more functionality or a different look, we may go with one of these services.
SwebApps was my top choice in the paid for area, because they offered their development fee for free to non-profit institutions. The downside is that you would be paying them around $400 a year to maintain the app. They offer a lot of features including a Content Management System that appears to make updating your app pretty easy. You can also contract them, for more money, to create a customizable app. Ultimately we chose AppMakr to start out with because it was free and very easy to set up.
Another paid for app service I considered was ShoutEm. I actually went through a decent amount of work and created a test app with their service. I liked the GUI with ShoutEm, but utlimately felt like AppMakr did what we wanted. Their prices start out at $30/month and go up for more services and options. ShoutEm was extremely easy to use and is definitley a service to consider if you’re willing to fork over some money.
I contacted a few other services that created custom apps for school districts in the past. Some of the apps I looked at were great, but the quotes I received for the custom app build ranged from $15,000-$25,000. There is no doubt that you pay for what you get. These apps were very high caliber, but in this tight budget era, most districts can’t afford a custom service like this.
Finally, there is also a list that I worked off of for my research from ReadWriteWeb. It is a Google Spreadsheet with a list of over 50 App Services with information on pricing, supported platforms and more. Check out the spreadsheet here it’s a great resource.
Hopefully you found this information helpful. This process was fun, and sometimes frustrating, but in the end a really cool project to take on. If you want to check out our app you can go to this link for the info. If you have any questions about the process feel free to email me through contact page.
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