[last modified 1/11/2013]
This is a highly biased (and continually updated) list of iPad tips of particular interest to educators. These tips mostly come from the following few excellent sites:- Smart iPad Guide - very gentle intro to the device and basic apps
- iPad Tips: Getting Started with the iPad from ipadinsight.com (this guide is from 2011 and is somewhat out of date)
- 50 really useful iPad 2 tips and tricks
- Apple iPad 2 Tips and Tricks Part 1 and Part 2
Take a snapshot of your iPad screen (i.e. print screen)
- press-and-hold the Power/Sleep button (along the same edge as the headphone jack) and press the iPad Home button (the one and only on the front of the device) together
- to redo, shake again
Switch between open apps
- double-touch the iPad Home button -- all the recently used apps appear on a strip at the bottom of the screen
- you can swipe the strip to reveal more apps
- touch an app to open it; touch-and-hold to make apps wiggle, at which point touch the "minus" icon to completely close/exit an app
Periodic clean-up
When you press the Home Button to leave an app, iPad does not completely exit out of the app. After a while of using the iPad, you've got dozens of apps that are not-quite-exited and they can start interfering with one another. To remedy this, you should periodically "clean up", say, every week:
- double-click the Home Button to display your recently used apps
- touch-and-hold any app on the displayed list until it jiggles and this "no entry" icon appears:
- touch each "no entry" icon to completely exit each app
Typing shortcuts
- while on the ABC keyboard, doing touch-and-hold on many keys brings up other choices: comma morphs into single quote, period morphs into double quote, all vowels and a few of the consonants morph into their variants in other Latin-alphabet languages
- to write in a single digit or symbol while remaining on the ABC keyboard, touch .?123 key and without releasing, slide to the desired digit; the same method works on the .?123 keyboard and the symbol keyboard
Create Home screen shortcut to a webpage
- in Safari, touch 
icon and select "Add to Home Screen"
- change the title before touching "Add" since you cannot rename it later
Remove (uninstall) an app
- touch-and-hold the app you want to remove until it jiggles and this "delete" icon appears:
- to remove the app from your iPad, touch this "delete" icon
- the app will still appear in the "Purchased" tab of your App Store and you can re-install it from there
- to exit the jiggling mode, press the Home Button
- apps that came pre-installed on the iPad cannot be removed (but you can put them away in a folder)
Organize apps into folders
- good how-to video on this is here; or if you prefer, here are the instructions:
- touch-and-hold the app you want to move in to a folder until it jiggles and this "delete" icon appears:
- touch-and-move the app to be over another app until the two apps appear to flash and a white border appears around them
- when you release the app, the newly created folder appears
- touch the default folder name to change it
- certain default apps (e.g. Newsstand) cannot be moved in to folders
Download PDFs to iBooks for offline reading
--- still to be done ---
Take a snapshot of your iPad screen (i.e. print screen)
- press-and-hold the Power/Sleep button (along the same edge as the headphone jack) and press the iPad Home button (the one and only on the front of the device) together
- the screen should flash briefly
- the snapshot is auto-saved in Photos ( more detailed instructions )
Undo/Redo by shaking
- to undo a "cut" operation, give the iPad a firm up-and-down shake; the "Undo" button should slide on to the screen- to redo, shake again
Switch between open apps
- double-touch the iPad Home button -- all the recently used apps appear on a strip at the bottom of the screen
- you can swipe the strip to reveal more apps
- touch an app to open it; touch-and-hold to make apps wiggle, at which point touch the "minus" icon to completely close/exit an app
Periodic clean-up
When you press the Home Button to leave an app, iPad does not completely exit out of the app. After a while of using the iPad, you've got dozens of apps that are not-quite-exited and they can start interfering with one another. To remedy this, you should periodically "clean up", say, every week:
- double-click the Home Button to display your recently used apps
- touch-and-hold any app on the displayed list until it jiggles and this "no entry" icon appears:
- touch each "no entry" icon to completely exit each app
Typing shortcuts
- while on the ABC keyboard, doing touch-and-hold on many keys brings up other choices: comma morphs into single quote, period morphs into double quote, all vowels and a few of the consonants morph into their variants in other Latin-alphabet languages
- to write in a single digit or symbol while remaining on the ABC keyboard, touch .?123 key and without releasing, slide to the desired digit; the same method works on the .?123 keyboard and the symbol keyboard
Create Home screen shortcut to a webpage
icon and select "Add to Home Screen"- change the title before touching "Add" since you cannot rename it later
Remove (uninstall) an app
- touch-and-hold the app you want to remove until it jiggles and this "delete" icon appears:
- to remove the app from your iPad, touch this "delete" icon
- the app will still appear in the "Purchased" tab of your App Store and you can re-install it from there
- to exit the jiggling mode, press the Home Button
- apps that came pre-installed on the iPad cannot be removed (but you can put them away in a folder)
Organize apps into folders
- good how-to video on this is here; or if you prefer, here are the instructions:
- touch-and-hold the app you want to move in to a folder until it jiggles and this "delete" icon appears:
- touch-and-move the app to be over another app until the two apps appear to flash and a white border appears around them
- when you release the app, the newly created folder appears
- touch the default folder name to change it
- certain default apps (e.g. Newsstand) cannot be moved in to folders
Download PDFs to iBooks for offline reading
--- still to be done ---
