Graduates & Students Transferring Out of VCS

Because a lot of your work is stored digitally, transitioning out of Valley means making a decision on what to do with all that content (email, photos, videos, documents, etc.). Later, you may regret not having saved your work.  So it is a good idea to seriously consider saving it now.

If you need help with any of these procedures, contact the Tech Support team - techhelp@vcschools.org.

In this article you will find instructions to:

  • Remove the supervision setting from your school iPad
  • Save Canvas Course Content and Submissions
  • Save iCloud Photos and Documents
  • Transfer Gmail, Contacts, and Google Docs to Another Account

Remove the supervision setting from your school iPad

  • At the end of your time at VCS, we will "release" your iPad so that you can remove the restrictions and other policies installed on your iPad by VCS. Once “released”, back up any photos, files, etc. you may want to keep from your iPad, then go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPad > Erase All Content and Settings. This will return the iPad back to factory settings. It is important to make sure your documents are saved to iCloud prior to resetting your iPad.

Save Canvas Course Content and Submissions

  • Canvas stores all your assignment submissions and course content, etc.  If you want to export that information, log into your Canvas Account, go to Settings and on the right panel at the bottom is a link to download your files.  Course content can be downloaded as an eBook.  You will need to install an eBook reader on your computer or iPad to read eBooks.  This process can take some time depending on how much content you are downloading.  Canvas will send you an email when the files are ready for download.  After you download them, you should move them to your Google Drive (which you will transfer later below)

Save  iCloud Photos and Documents

  • The easiest way to save your iPad files and photos is to copy them to Google first.  You can do this for most files using the Files app.  Select the files you want to save, and then “move” them to a Google Drive folder.  For photos, open the Google Photos app, and sync your photos to Google. This could take a long time, so be patient.  You can check the progress by tapping the account icon in the top right corner.  Once your content is saved to Google, you can proceed to the next step below (saving/transferring your Google files)

Transfer Gmail, Contacts, and Google Docs to Another Account

  • Your Google Account will be deactivated in January (after leaving VCS).
  • You will need to transfer your Gmail content to another account if you want to keep it.  This includes email, contacts, Google Docs, Google Photos, and all other Google related content.  
  • Using Google Transfer - This tool (https://takeout.google.com/transfer) will transfer all of your Gmail and Google Drive content to another Google account.  It does not copy contacts, Google Photos, or any other Google data (see Google Takeout below for copying other Google files and data).  You can only use this tool if you have a personal “_yourname@gmail.com_” account.  Keep in mind that a personal account is limited to 15GB of free storage.  Your school Google account might have accumulated more than that over the years.  To check how much space your school Google account is actually using, go to https://myaccount.google.com/preferences and scroll to the Storage Section.  When you use the transfer tool, Google will copy all email and all Google Drive files to your personal account into a folder labeled with your Valley email address.  This process can take a long time.  Google will send you an email when everything is copied over.  Since the files are copied, if you make changes to the original files after running this process, those changes will not be copied over.  Also any files in Google Drive that are “shared with you” will not be copied, since you are not the owner of those files.  If you want to copy shared files, you must first make “copies” of those files in your own Google Drive.
  • Using Google TakeOut - This tool (google.com/takeout) helps you create an archive of all your Google data which you can then download to your computer and later imported into other services.  Depending on how much data you have, it can take a long time (hours or days).  Google will send you an email when everything is archived and ready to download.  A few things to mention about Google Takeout:
    • your Google Docs will be converted to another format; and only the documents that you own are saved (if you want to save documents that are shared with you, you first must make a copy of them in your Google Drive)
    • your emails will be saved to mailbox files (.mbox) which you will have to import into a mail client on your computer before you can transfer them to another email service 
    • your contacts are saved in virtual card files (.vcf) which does not support distribution lists (groups).  After importing your contacts to another service, you will have to recreate any  groups you have made.  There is another option in Gmail settings, export all contacts using Google CSV format.  This will create a file on your computer that you can then ‘Import’ into another Gmail account.

If you need help with any of these steps, please visit the Tech Support office.

Valley Christian Schools iPad Support Team
techhelp@vcschools.org.