Category Archives: Students

Anything relating to student devices

Faculty/Staff, iPads, Make Tech Easier, Students

5 helpful Smartphone/Tablet Battery Charging Tips

Some smartphone battery-charging myths die-hard.

  • One of them is that allowing your phone to charge all night is a good idea. It isn’t
    • [The iPad Guy somewhat disagrees with this one!]
  • Frequently charging your phone is also a bad idea, believe it or not.
    • Why? Ions traveling from the electrical outlet to the battery cause wear and tear on the battery, which in the long run reduces your smartphone battery’s lifespan. The New York Times published an article reporting that frequently charging Li-Ion batteries “accelerates corrosion”.
  • Another bad battery-charging charging habit? Using the wrong charger, not meant for that phone model, as it will be delivering electricity in the wrong capacitance or voltage, which, again, is hard on your smartphone’s battery.

The iPad Guy FREQUENTLY sees students using the wrong charger for the iPads. DO NOT use one of those cheapie chargers – they miss significant power circuitry that the iPads need so they’ll charge corrrectly.

Below are some battery-charging tricks that will extend your battery life:

  1. Only charge when your battery gets to 50%. This will cut down on the frequency with which you charge your smartphone battery, and will also keep you from letting it get too low or die, which is equally as bad for it.
  2. Use the correct charger. As already mentioned above, you will want to use the charger that came with your smartphone. Microsoft confirms that using the wrong or faulty hardware for phone charging is a bad idea. [NOTE: Apple says the same thing. No, it’s NOT because they are just trying to make more money. There are excellent engineering reasons behind the statements.]
  3. Turn off unused apps or features to save battery life. A good trick for saving smartphone battery power is to turn off those power-draining apps that aren’t being used. On the iPads/iPhones, you can:
    1. Turn off Background App Refresh
    2. Select a NONdynamic wallpaper.
    3. Swipe out of any apps you aren’t using. [Doublick the home button, and swipe away].
    4. Shutdown your device every once in a while.
  4. Don’t let your phone overheat, i.e. overcharge. Letting your smartphone get overheated due to overcharging it is also a bad idea. One tip on this point is to seek out a less powerful charger for the same model, as that’s a common cause of smartphones overheating. iOS, Android, and Windows devices have lithium ion batteries which can corrode at a rapid rate if they are charged too frequently and/or overheat. For iPads:
    1. ALWAYS use the Apple Charger – do NOT use an el cheapo knockoff.
  5. Restart or reboot your device. Restarting iPhones, in particular, can help to cut down on the battery drain. [Make sure you swipe out of all your running apps first, though.]

Original article is HERE.

Faculty, iPads, Student, Students

Move Pix/Vids from Drive to iPad

Sometimes you need to move a picture or video that you’ve stashed in Drive, so you can use in on your iPad [in iMovie, for example].

Here’s how:

  • Open up Drive and naviagate to the picture or video you want to use.
  • Click on it – it should open up so you can view it
  • Hold your finger on it. A window should popup that will give you the option to save it to your Photo Album.

From there you can import into iMovie, Textilus, etc.

 

So what happens when you copy the photo from Drive to your Photos, and then Drive copies all your Photos back up to Drive because of the setting. Do you get 2 copies of the photo? Hmmmm……….

Faculty, iPads, Network, Student, Students

iCloud – how to setup your account

The MUST list:

  • you MUST use your MDS email address
  • you MUST use your Moodle password [or if your moodle password is missing a number, add 1871 to the end of it. Ask Mr. Rule is you don’t know the significance of that date.]

The WHY list:

  • because it will allow restoring your data if your iPad has to be wiped [MUCH faster and easier than the alternative]
  • because you can use Find My iPad when [not “if”] you misplace your iPad [saving many headaches]

The HOW List:

On your iPad:

  • Settings –> iCloud
  • Create an account
  • Type in your birthday
  • Use an existing email [NOT an iCloud email]
  • Set the email address and password – remember, MDS email address, moodle password
  • Answer the security questions.
  • DO NOT setup a rescue email.
  • Open your email – look for an email from Apple, It will ask you to click on a link, Do so to complete the process.
  • Back in the Settings app –> iCloud, it should say your name and your MDS email address at the top.
  • Confirm the Find My iPad is turned ON.
  • Confirm Backup is Turned ON.
  • Start a Backup. Seriously. Right now.

 

These instructions were from memory, and so might be a tad off. Use your common sense if/when reality diverges from this list.