Thing #18

We have 22 new laptops coming for our grade level in the fall. We were told that there's a good chance that the district will not be loading Microsoft Office on them. It was recommended that we use either Open Office or Google Docs, instead. Needless to say, I was really curious to see how these programs will work for primary kids, how to set them up, and how they will work with the existing programs on our old computer equipment.

Here is a link to Google for Educators, which has information for teachers that I found very helpful. It explains how to use Google docs in the classroom and how to set up classroom accounts. Each child needs an individual e-mail address.

Unfortunately, Google says children have to be 13 or older to use Google Docs. So it looks like this won't work for my students.

It can work for the teachers, though. The only downside I could find is that it cannot upload the animation features from PowerPoint presentations.

Open Office is a lot like Microsoft Word, only not as fancy. It does not automatically come with clip art. There are free clip art add-ons, but they don't even come close to Microsoft when it comes to quality and selection. I wonder if you have to add the add-on to each individual computer? I think 2nd graders will have no difficulty using Open Office.