Sra. Spanglish Tech Tips: Chrome Extensions

I have a handful of secret weapons that make my web experience–and my students’–smoother and more productive, and several of them are free in the Chrome Web App store.

Extensity

First of all, if you’re going to have more than one or two extensions, and you need to function at a speed at least slightly above “snail,” you’ll want to be able to switch extensions off and on. This handy little yin-yang extension lets me go through and turn off, say, my Pinterest extension or WordReference if I’ve already collected my pins and and working in English mode for the time being.

That way my computer can function a little faster, and I don’t have to go back to setting to reward myself with a little Pinterest time when I’m done!

Snagit

I confess I was completely lost as to how to help students screenshot on Chromebooks without a PrtSc button. There are a few different screen capture tools out there, but I like Snagit because not only does it save straight to fa file in my Google Drive, but I also have a few options.

I mostly use the “region” screenshot to capture just the part of the screen I want, like an infograph or when I have a student example. Then I can use the basic annotation tools to censor names!

I also like the scrolling capture feature to capture whole blog posts or articles–this comes in handy come portfolio time so students don’t have to take multiple screenshots to share what they interpreted.

Tab Scissors

I got this one from one of our district Pinnacle sessions! I recommend it when students are working on interpretive reading for their IPAs so they can have their own Doc for copying/interpreting pulled up and neatly aligned with the text they’re interpreting in side-by-side windows. It’s really useful for me in grading, too: ForAllRubrics or instructions on Classroom in one window, assignment to grade in the other!

Symbaloo Bookmarker

Much like my beloved “Add Pin” extension, this extension lets me collect links quickly, especially to make quick webmixes of classes’ portfolios or blogs. Sure I have all of the links already sorted into Seesaw folders, but this way I can color code so I can keep multiple classes, units, or projects in one place but still tell which is which.

I can even  do back into my webmixes to alphabetize for quick grading, make groups set up according to their seating/self-improvement teams, or add cute little icons to help show what links represent (hourglasses for the time management team, credit cards for money management, and bowling pins for exercise!)

Of course I’m always on the lookout for more tools and timesavers. For example, I can’t wait to try one of Sra. Cottrell‘s favorite extensions, One-Click Timer!

Do you have any other awesome extensions we should try? I’d be forever in your debt if you could point me to a good one for adding accents quickly!