Set up your computer exactly how you like it.
From setting your own choice of homepage on Internet Explorer, to setting up Chrome so it opens all your daily sites in tabs automatically, to using the awesome powers of extended desktop, I’ll show you how to do it all.
1. Setting your homepage on Internet Explorer.
(Full disclosure, some schools disable this feature. If you can’t see the right options, you might need to check with your IT technicians…)
2. Setting a homepage (or pages) on Chrome.
Chrome allows you to set up a selection of your fave sites, so they all open when you open a new browser window. Any sites you use daily at work (hello, TES!) can be added.
To configure a page or set of pages that will open each time you launch Chrome.
- Click or tap the menu button at the top right of Chrome. It’s the one with three horizontal dots.
- Select Settings.
- Scroll down to the On startup section.
- Click the radio button next to Open a specific page or set of pages.
- Click Add a new page and then enter its URL, or choose Use current pages to automatically add all the URLs you have open in Chrome (you can remove any pages you don’t want to use as homepages).
3. Extended desktop
If you’ve not met this feature before, prepare to spend at least 5 minutes moving things from screen to projector screen and saying ‘oooooh!!!’ because it is frankly a bit jolly cool.
Press ‘Windows key + P’. You should see this:
- Computer only is the default option. Your computer screen is the only place you’ll see stuff.
- Duplicate clones your screen to a connected secondary display, monitor or projector. You’ll see the same on your computer screen as you do on your IWB.
- Projector only turns off your laptop’s LCD and turns the projector into your monitor.
- Extend is the super cool one. It means your computer screen and your IWB are BOTH independent screens. You can put up a video on your IWB, and it’ll still be showing while you do your register etc on your computer screen. Boom.
To get it back to ‘normal’, just hit ‘Windows + P’ again, and choose duplicate. Screen = IWB.
If you haven’t yet seen why it’s so cool, extend your screen (Windows + P, extend), and now try to drag this browser window off the right side of your computer screen. You should see it magically appearing in the left side of your IWB…
Top tip: If you ‘lose’ a window (can’t grab the right bit to drag it back over to your computer screen), switch back to ‘duplicate’ mode (Windows + P) – it’ll ping back to where it should be, and you can move/close/shrink it.