Innovation Grant

As participants in the Innovation Grant, we agreed to start blogging about best practices in the use of the IPAD. We are hoping teachers will share their ideas about the IPAD by writing in their blogs. We all know that collaboration is so important, but sometimes we don't have the time to meet up and discuss ideas physically. So this may be a place to do that when people get the chance to share what they know. Let me be the first to start up with a few of my favorite tips for using the IPAD. I got these from Randy Damewood, Director of Technology, Coffee County Schools:

Power Tips

Double Click the Home Button to switch to different apps

Search your iPad- use the Spotlight (swipe to the right from the home screen) You can find both content and apps You can go to the settings section and set what you want Spotlight to search

Lock Rotation - change the button option in settings for the side button

Quick volume mute - hold the down side of the volume button for 2 seconds

Typing Tips

Practice Typing with the on board keyboard, but you may find the wireless one very good.

cut and Paste from one app to another - Just tap and hold a word, then use your fingr to drag to select more text, and then Copy it. Go to the other application, tap and hold in the input box, and then use Paste. Easy!

Replace or Define iOS5 - You can now select a word and choose to replace it if there is a typo or get a definition of the word - just put your finger on the word and then choose select, and then your options will be there.

Select a whole paragraph the easy way? Just tap it 4 times to highlight the entire paragraph, then use Copy

Use the .com key to quickly get to other domains endings- hold it down and select one of the options

Magnifying Glass - Fine tune text selection- Hold your finger on text and then a maginifying glass will come up an allow you to place the cursor where you want it.

Split Keyboard - When the keyboard is up, hold finger on outside of the keyboard icon lower right and choose from the menu item. You can also have the keyboard located on a different place on the screen.

Easy Caps - Hold the caps button and slide to the letter that you want capitalized - Double tap the Shift Keys to turn on caps lock

Caps Lock - How To turn on - Tap the Settings app. and click on the General menu > the Keyboard. Then turn "Enable Caps Lock" on. Then just double-tap the shift key to enable caps lock once using the keyboard.

Quick Apostrophe and Quotes - if you want a quick Apostrophe key while you are typing, just hold down the ! key and then chose the ', for the Quotes - hold the ? key

Keyboard Shortcuts iOS5 - inside General Settings - Text Expander