EASY ACCESS

Often your IT person will determine how the laptops are set up. This usually means your Kindergarten laptops look just like your fifth grade laptops.

However, if you have grade-level or individual user accounts, you might be able to have some input into how each is set up.

Recommendations:

MAC: Put the applications you will use during the year in the dock. Take out what you won't need including System Preferences and the Dashboard. Add the applications you estimate you will use during the year. Lock down the dock for K-2. One application to do this is TransparentDock. You should also add an alias to the folder students will be saving in (documents, server folder, other) to the desktop and to the dock.

WINDOWS: Put the applications you will use during the year pinned to the start menu. Also, clean out the applications that show up under the programs menu. You should leave the Accessories folder as those are sometimes needed for maintenance, but rest you can take off. There are free applications you can use to create a dock on Windows such as ObjectDock. You should put an alias to the save folder (My docs, server, other) on the desktop.

Some Recommended Applications:

browser (Firefox is generally easier to use than MIE)
drawing program (Kidpix, TuxPaint, Pixie)
word processor (Word, Open Office, Pages)
presentation (Powerpoint, Open Office, Keynote, Photo Story)
audio recording (Garageband, Audacity)
photo organizing and editing (iPhoto, Picasa)
brainstorming (Inspiration, Kidspiration)
video (iMovie, MovieMaker)

Favorite Online Applications:

Edublogs - Create Blogs, lots of teacher controls, edublogs.org
Wikispaces - Easy enough for first graders to use, www.wikispaces.com
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives - http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vLibrary.html
Google Custom Search Engine - Create your own search engine with pre-selected websites. Give students the "Google Experience" safely. http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
Starfall - Favorite K-2 website www.starfall.com
Enchanted Learning - Great for research reports in 1st - 2nd grades www.enchantedlearning.com
Timez Attack - Download video game to teach multiplication - Students love it. Perfect in 3rd grade.