Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Using Guided Access on iPads


One of the big needs for education is to keep students focused on the task at hand, and an iPad with various Apps on it is a distraction waiting to happen.  Guided Access gives control to the teacher to be able to keep a student within an App.  Guided Access can even work in the Safari or Chrome browsers to limit students moving off of websites to others they shouldn't be on.

To turn on Guided Access. Open the Settings App on your iPad. Choose the General Settings on the left hand side of the menu bar.  Then choose Accessibility from the right hand side menu.


Now you are in the Accessibility choice of menus.  Scroll down to the bottom and choose Guided Access.

Turn on Guided Access by sliding the button bar to the right.  You will also wish to turn on a Passcode using "Passcode Settings" to set your code for unlocking the Guided Access.   The Accessibility Shortcut will also need to be turned on.  This is how you will trigger the Guided Access when an App is open by clicking the Home button 3 times quickly.  It will also be used to turn off Guided Access by clicking the Home button 3 times quickly and then putting in your passcode.

One of the great features of Guided Access is you can limit access within an a application.  Simply by triple tapping to get the border of black to show, you can circle the areas you do not want to function in the App. 

This then deactivates that region of the app. The circles are retained to show that they are inactive.  Make sure to lock the screen rotation on the iPad before setting the Guided Access for the browser so that when turning the iPad to the other rotation the shading will disappear and the access doesn't block.  


Uses for the classroom:  Using Guided Access for online testing helps to control the App the students are working with and keep them from sharing answers.  Guided Access also offers the ability to set time limits so that you can limit the use by the students.


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