Digital Champions Network



When you first start a session, it’s important to set up the desktop to be as clear and comfortable for the learner as possible.

Simplifying the desktop

To make things easier for your learners, keep the desktop as simple as possible:

• Avoid desktop pictures that make the icons difficult to find

• Delete any icons they’re unlikely to use (but explain that they can be put back)

• Include shortcuts to popular programs such as their web browser, email, antivirus, documents/libraries, printer settings and any other useful ones they might use

• Pin the most important programs to the Start screen in Windows 8.1 or the Taskbar in Windows 7.

For information on how to pin items to the TaskBar or Start screen in Windows 8.1, Digital Unite has a useful guide to using the Start screen.

Although it's better not to teach your learners several ways of doing the same thing, it’s good to have an alternative way to access programs in case they delete an icon by mistake.

Windows 8.1 Start screen

On the new Windows 8.1 Start screen, you can choose which icons or ‘tiles’ you see when it opens. To remove a tile, right click it, and a set of options appears at the bottom of the screen. Left click on the ‘unpin from start’ option. You can also easily search for a program or app that's installed on your computer by simply typing its name when you are on the Start screen.

Other useful features include:

Hot Corners

These relate to the four corners of the screen. Moving the mouse pointer to the top and bottom corners on the left of the screen will reveal which apps or programs are open. Moving the mouse pointer to the top and bottom corners on the right of the screen will reveal the ‘Charms menu’.

Charms menu

This menu will help you navigate Windows 8.1. There are icons for Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings.

For a summary of Hot Corners and Charms, watch this video:

Moving from the Start screen to the desktop

Once you are familiar with the Start screen, one left click on your Desktop tile will take you to the more familiar desktop layout of Windows. Once there you can make personalisation and display adjustments in the same way as you would in Windows 7. Look out though for some extra options to choose from when making changes.

To get back to the Start screen, press the Windows key or move the mouse pointer to the bottom left ‘Hot Corner’ and the Start screen mini view will appear. Left click on this to get back to Start. 

Windows 8.1 will usually switch over to the desktop screen when it is using an installed program such as Microsoft Word. 

Windows 8.1 apps like ‘Mail’ open full screen with a Metro style look. If you don't like the new Metro style apps, you can also still install desktop versions of browsers such as Chrome, Firefox etc and also Skype by downloading them from the appropriate website.

Internet Explorer can be set to always open on the Desktop in the normal way – have a look at the Digital Unite guide on How to use the internet on Windows 8.1

Size matters!

[pic]It’s important to make sure that desktop icons are big enough for learners to see – a quick way to change the size is to use the Ctrl key and mouse scroll wheel together.

For more information on making the desktop easier to see, have a look at the Accessibility section in the Digital Champion Toolkit.

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