My question is how do we wirelessly manage those 25 ipads. Adult learners, not too many ‘bells & whistles” just electronic notes, with the ability to update wirelessly.

Does apple have a classroom/corporate solution?

Waiting to purchase a Flip Video would be wise (until they provide an external audio jack).

Here are the biggest problems early adopters face:

- Lack of interest in educational space: Apple is unabashedly focusing their efforts on the consumer space and mostly ignoring the support of iPads in schools. This is mainly through the mantra that app management is totally “end-user” oriented (see below).

- Apple’s War on …. Everyone?
Apple has declared war on two of the biggest content delivery and creation companies on the Internet: Google (via Android) and Adobe.
I would STRONGLY advise anyone who wants to roll out an iPad-related infrastructure for teaching to wait and see what happens in this arena. If Google and Adobe start shooting back educators stand to lose huge amounts of web content in the crossfire.
THIS INCLUDES GOOGLE APPS. Yes, the linchpin of an educational productivity strategy for the iPad is, in my mind, on the block if Apple doesn’t start to understand that THE CONTENT is what people buy an iPad for – not the other way around.

- Lack of standards support for internet content: (Flash, Flash Flash.) Just because Apple doesn’t like it doesn’t mean that we don’t need it.

Apple needs to understand that web content is web content no matter what the delivery method. a BEST EFFORT TO DELIVER THIS CONTENT is expected of anyone selling a device to access “The Web”. This is the de facto rule and we’ve been spoiled enough by it to completely miss the evil behind Apple’s new mobile device strategy:
The iPad suggests that it is a device for accessing the web but it intentionally leaves out parts of the web which it deems inconvenient or overly competitive. This is misleading and just plain wrong.
Microsoft did this in the 90’s and was soundly flogged in the court of opinion. Apple should suffer no less in their blatant attempts to put the monetizing of content ahead of the usability of their product.

- Lack of standards support for hardware: Standard USB and upgradeable memory are missing. These are things that an institutional life cycle needs for items that may have a longer life span than a consumer product. Think about all the cameras, video recorders and interactive touchboards that you have and understand that they’ll be useless without Apple driver support.

- Lack of software management: This is one of the big deal breakers. Schools will have to set up App Store accounts for each iPad under the current infrastructure and download each desired app individually to each machine. This will require hours and hours of time for the average school.

- Apple’s “Walled Garden” of content: Apple has been a little more than fickle about what it allows on its devices and it’s pretty much shown us that DRM is the most important thing where content is concerned. Therefore, a broken or lost iPad takes all of its licensed software (including textbooks) with it. The result will require re-purchasing everything that was installed on it.

- Lack of customer-replaceable parts: When a battery dies the entire unit has to be shipped off for a replacement that will cost about one-quarter to one-half the value of the device (this is a generous estimate based on iPhone battery service). This contrasts poorly with a laptop replacement which is in the 10-20 percent range.

- Lack of output support: There are many ways to do creative multimedia projects on the iPad but relatively few ways to get it back out. It can’t directly print and cannot output video clips to a directly attached storage medium. This poses a problem even in a “paperless” organization.