Here’s something I discovered recently on my iPad running iOS 5: If you are entering text, take a look at the button in the lower right corner, which has an icon of a keyboard. Press and hold this button for a couple of seconds and a little menu will show up. You have the option to undock or split the keyboard.
I’ve found the split keyboard to be very useful on the iPad when I’m holding it in landscape mode. Splitting the keyboard in half gives each hand a shorter radius to move to type.
Undocking the keyboard will release it from its position at the bottom of the screen; you can slide it up or down to wherever you’d like it. Slide the keyboard up and down by using that same key. You can redock it by sliding it to the bottom of the screen or holding down the keyboard button again to bring up the menu.