Setting the metrics is how you change priorities. The higher metric is more "expensive" to use, so the OS will use the interfaces with the lowest metric if it needs to route traffic. In case the lower metric interface is shutdown it will use the higher metric interface since it is the only interface which can be used to route traffic towards that particular network/destination.

The metrics are specified in the file /etc/network/interfaces, link points to the documentation.

Use any text editor to edit the file, identify the networks, and just change the metric parameter and save. Reboot is the simplest way to reset all the values without getting into the geeky details of restarting the network services.