The great thing about building a good relationship with students (especially high school students) is that they'll usually tell you the truth if you ask them a question. One good example was my end of year survey last year. I asked about the biggest drawback to having iPads in class. Almost every student said it was a distraction. More specifically, games and chat apps were a distraction.
We went into the 1:1 program with the arguably naive notion that we would leave everything open and teach the kids how to use everything responsibly. We greatly underestimated a teenager's ability to exercise self control. The typical freshman is incapable of staying on task if their friend sends them an IM from another class saying, "HAHA, just beat your high score in Temple Run!" (This is an actual example, by the way.) So by the end of the year I was spending lots of time reminding them what they were supposed to be doing and they spent lots of time trying not to get caught playing games. They were very honest about their inability to ignore these distractions.
As a result, my one request for this year was locking the app store. Period. No access, no iTunes, no students adding anything. So far it's made a huge difference in time on task, project completion, and grades. Freshmen don't know what they're missing and sophomores and juniors can't say it's a bad idea since it came from them.
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