Overview
Once you login to WordPress the dashboard will appear. The dashboard is a tool to quickly access the areas within WordPress that you'd like to edit.. It also gives a quick glance as to what content you have built. Below are the main areas of the dashboard that you will use.
Top Navigation
The top navigation of WP Dashboard is a short cut to jump to different areas within your site, (i.e. creating a new post, page, add media....) Your top navigation may look different then the screen-shot below but it is still just a short-cut to destinations within WordPress.
Side Navigation
The side navigation list all the sections you would need to work in.
Center Section
In the center of the page is a section titled Right Now. This areas give a quick overview as to how much content you have on your site (pages, posts, tags...).
QuickPress & Recent Drafts
The QuickPress section of the dashboard allows you to quickly add a short post without having to go into your dashboard and post editor to create a post. It is a very basic editor. While we don't recommend using this approach often it does allow you to quickly publish a quick comment to your blog. It does not allow you to add featured images or check off a category.
The Recent Drafts section allows you to quickly jump to posts you are in the process of writing.
More...
To learn more about working within each section of the Dashboard visit the WordPress Overview help page.