When Change is your Currency, You are Never Broke

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Teachers love surprises, and Google's update of their iOs app suite was a favorite on Friday, just in time for teacher appreciation week.  Any teachers who had been using the Drive app on iOs for creating documents discovered that the app had broken up with itself and compose didn't live here any more.  It was as though I went to my flashlight and when I turned it on it didn't light up, instead it produced a terms of service agreement that seems to say that light isn't made on the flashlight anymore.  
This is bad news to get about your go-to word processor app.  The previous day I had seen some "news" posts about documents and sheets, the 2 new google drive apps.  The Google apps for education community is excited about these apps because they seem to be easier to add users and switch profiles.  This is great in a shared device environment.  I added these apps to our shared iPads as soon as I got the news.  If I had also understood that drive was going to become a storage and sharing app, I would have asked all the students in the 1:1 iPad program to download these apps also.  
I don't know if this was a huge issue on my campus, we use noteability a great deal (BTW: it is free this week).
In my tech committee meetings we are discussing if we need student Box accounts in addittion to GAfE and the simple fact is that it is hard to trust a service you use for free that is subject to change.  I know change happens, but no one likes it.  My teachers and my tech director want a single awesome workflow that is dependable.  
Workflows change because we work in a world of change.  On many of my devices I have set the apps to update automatically because I am responsible for so many device the update time really begins to add up.  Researching every update is another investment of time.  Even then, I think the idea that I could keep the students from updating apps is foolhardly.
While I might rage against an app that catches me unprepared in the classroom, I understand that updates must happen and often improve performance.  I understand I cannot shape how apps change.  I can also appreciate that it would be a powerful technology that limited instead of expanded the number of variables in my classroom.

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