iPad onscreen keyboard gets stuck too high on screen

Recently, while using my old first generation iPad the onscreen keyboard began to appear too high on the screen. The onscreen keyboard was about a third of the way up the screen with a large gap below it. After searching for a solution in forums etc and attempting a couple of reboots the next step seemed only to be to reset the iPad. I felt that a little drastic and decided to play around a bit.

The solution appeared to be press the right most edge of the drop keyboard button. This offers you a split or dock option. Select split, then press again and while in split keyboard view and select merge and dock.