Customize A Web Browser For Home School Use

Although nine-year-old Alex is already cruising the web on his laptop, we’re only just beginning to set it up for home schooling.

So far, we set up safety features and uploaded several browsers, but now we want to customize the Internet browser that he will be using for daily assignments.  My goal is to make it easy for Alex to find the online applications that he will most often use for his daily school work.

Downloading The Flock Browser

Due to the many integrated features that it offers, we’ve decided to use the Flock browser for home school work.  Setting up Flock is easy.  Click here to download Flock and follow the simple instructions on the Getting Started Tab.

Or, you can do what I did on my computer, and follow the links to the video tutorials that are part of Internet Marketing Superstar, Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge Preseason Training.

Selecting Flock Options

The first step after downloading Flock is to select preferences.  After clicking “Options” under the Tools drop-down menu (see video tutorial if you can’t find this,) I chose the following:

Main -

• Startup:  Highlight “Show my windows and tabs from last time”
• Downloads: I kept it simple by selecting the default.

Tabs -

• I set all radial buttons to open all options in “a new tab.”  This way there is less chance of losing current work.

Content -

• Choose your preferred reader for displaying feeds: scroll down to “Web Feed” and select “Use Google.”  (I’ll explain how I’m setting up Google Reader for home school research in a future article.)

Searching –

• Default Search Engine: Google.
• Include in Search Elsewhere: Yahoo.

Privacy -

• History: I selected “keep history at least 60 days” so that I can occasionally check the sites my son has visited, just in case.

Security -

• I’ve set this to give all warnings, and to remember passwords.

Add In Your Accounts and Services

After applying preferences, I was ready to add in the features that truly makes Flock shine.  The Getting Started Tab lists many online applications that can be added to any of the available sidebars.  Once they’ve been activated, you can access and use these directly from a sidebar.  These sidebars can be opened by clicking one of the icons found left to right on the Flock Toolbar: My World, People, Media Bar, Feeds, Mailbox, Favorites, and All Accounts and Services.

For my nine-year-old son, we only registered accounts for a limited number of applications that I believe are useful in home school learning:

Email -

• Yahoo! Mail: An Email account is needed to register on other sites, but I’ve also set this up to encourage Alex to communicate with friends and family (more on this in an upcoming article.)

Media Bar -

• Photos: Alex has several applications for working with images – Google Picasa, Flickr, and Photobucket.
• Videos: Alex doesn’t yet have a YouTube account, but we may enable this option at a later date.

Blog -

• Blogger: Alex can post to his blog directly from Flock’s blog editor.

People Sidebar -

• Twitter: I wouldn’t consider allowing a nine-year-old on most of the social media applications, but we’re experimenting with this one.

But Wait, There’s More

Extensions – These add even more usability to the browser.  You can find a few on Flock, but there are many more through Firefox that work well on Flock.  I have several favorites, but it’s going to take trial and error to determine those that are useful for home school purposes.

Toolbars – The only toolbar that I installed on Alex’s laptop was the Yahoo Toolbar, with the following buttons: Reference, Calendar, Weather, Kids, and Games.  After we’ve given this I trial run, I’ll look into creating a custom toolbar (more on this in a future article.)

Finally, I put links to the most visited sites right on the Flock Toolbar (on the long tab next to the sidebar icons.)  You can just click and drag the logo from most sites right onto the toolbar.  This is where we put links to Google Reader and a couple of Alex’s favorite games of the moment.

Your Turn

What did I miss?  Can you think of any other bells & whistles that you’d like to see on a student’s web portal?

Home Schooling The Networked Student Series:

• Home Schooling The Networked Student
• How To Set Up Your Child’s New Computer
• Selecting A Browser For Your Child’s Computer

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Tagged as: 30 Day Challenge, Digital Learning, Ed Dale, Flock, Home School, Yahoo Toolbar