As the seniors say their goodbyes to LZHS, the district is saying goodbye to security issues with student iPads.

Starting next fall, all students’ iPads will be moving to managed IDs. This provides more options on how to manage apps and student safety, Robert Vossel, principal, said.

“Mr. Vossel, myself, all of the other administrators in the district, and teachers believe that it’s our responsibility to help make all students’ digital environment safe, just like the school building itself is safe,” Crystal Steker, District Director of Technology, said. “We believe that this change will help make iPads safer for students.”

The changes will help protect student information to keep students more safe in the technology aspect, Steker said.

“You can only go to the D95 self portal to get apps, you can not go to the Apple store. What we have found is some students when they go to the App Store and sign up, [they] give [their] contact information — over share,” Steker said. “We want to be able to help set those standards for the type of information that is released on your school ID. Obviously what you do at home is different, but on your school ID, we want to make sure that the information that is released is safe.”

Although the changes will be implemented for next year, the freshmen have already begun making the changes with their iPads, according to Vossel.

“The freshmen started right after spring break in FAME,” Vossel said. “The first step was talking about how to ensure that all of the data they have is being backed up properly. The first thing is before we move anything, we need to make sure that everybody has everything set up so that it’s being back up properly, because as they move from one login ID to another, they need to be able to retrieve all that from a cloud-based source. The next step was the transition from the old ID to the new, so logging out of the ID, logging into the new one, and going back and accessing all that other material from either a Google Drive or Notability.”

As for the current sophomores and juniors, they will be responsible for backing up their iPads themselves and will receive more information on how to do this process in the future, Steker said.

“Current sophomores and juniors are going to turn in their current iPads as of the last day of their exams,” Steker said. “They will be able to make appointments throughout the summer where they can come in and work with the iAgents at the high school to pick up a new iPad. That new iPad will be preconfigured with their managed IDs.”

As for the reason for the timing of the iPad changes, managed IDs is just a feature that Apple has released over the last year so when students first received their iPads, the update was not an option, Steker said. In addition, this change also provides more safety to students, which is what the school strives for.

Other than the changing of students’ Apple ID logins, for students there will not be many other visible changes besides an increase to 200 GB of storage, and an update to the security system that runs in the background, which some will not even notice, Vossel said. Overall this change allows for more safety and ensures students will use their iPads appropriately.