iPad Skills
to Practice
In order to best prepare your child for using the ipad, there are some basic skills that they will need to be able to do on their own to ensure productivity and success. Please watch the videos below and make sure your child knows how to do these things prior to school starting. This will help avoid frustration and make them feel more at ease and ready to learn.
Turn the iPad On/Off
While you may not have to do this every day, your child may have to do this if their ipad is having issues. We also suggest you restart the ipad each weekend to help avoid problems.
How to do it: Press and hold the power button until the screen darkens and you see the red oval. Swipe to shut down. Once the screen is entirely off, count to 10 slowly. Then press and hold the power button until the apple appears on the screen.
Change the Volume
Your child will usually be using headphones, but they will need to know how to change the volume.
How to do it: You can either change the volume with the physical buttons OR from the control center. To access the control center, swipe down from the upper right corner toward the middle of the screen. Use the volume picture and drag up or down to adjust. You can also use the volume buttons on the edge of the iPad.
Switch Between Apps
Students may need to switch back to an app after going to the home screen.
How to do it: Start with your finger touching the iPad on the bezel below the screen (not the touch screen part). Without picking up your finger, quickly slide your finger up toward the middle of the screen. Without lifting your finger, pause and wait for the app tiles to appear. Then pick up your finger and tap the one you want to switch to. Another way to do this is quickly double tapping the circle home button.
Close All Open Apps
Sometimes ipads have a hard time running when too many apps are open. This may cause an app to stop working or run slowly. We suggest closing out all of the open apps and trying again. Closing all apps every day is very helpful!
How to do it: After swiping up to see all open apps (see "Switch Between Apps" above), touch an open app and without lifting your finger, swipe it up and away. Repeat with all open apps.
Leave an App Without Closing It
Students may need to leave an app running while completing other tasks either on the iPad or on paper. This makes the transitions more independent for kindergarten students and allows them to access their teacher to ask for help.
How to do it: Press the circle home button once to return to the home screen. (To return, see "Switch Between Apps" or click the app again.)
Close All Safari Tabs
As stated before under the app explanations, we use Clever to log into certain apps. Over time Clever tends to open too many tabs in Safari. When there are too many tabs open, it can cause ipads to run slowly. We suggest closing all tabs in Safari at the end of the day or the end of the week to prevent this from happening.
How to do it: In the Safari app, look in the top right corner for the two overlapping squares. Press and hold until a menu appears. Chose "Close All ## Tabs" to close all the tabs at once.
Plugging in the iPad to the Charger
Students will be using their iPad for most of the school day. A lot of our apps can drain the battery. If students learn how to plug in the charger they are able to be more independent throughout the day. We suggest charging your child's iPad every night. Please note: In order to avoid having students using wall outlets, please have the charger already plugged in so students only need to plug into their device. Chargers will be sent home for you to keep with the ipad and will not be kept in class.
How to do it: Plug the charger into the wall. Students will use the smaller end of the charger and plug it into the charging port located at the bottom of the iPad.