Extensions on Google Chrome can bring the student learning experience to a whole new level. They can add amazing functionality to the browser, which can help support personalized learning. I am also going to share two that will help you as an educator to better support your students!
The Chrome Web Store has thousands of extensions but here are a 10 that my students and I use on a daily basis and can help you and your student be successful this year:
Google Tone
This extension allows you and your students to quickly share URLs and material with one another. In order to send and receive the URL, the extension must be downloaded. To send the URL simply click the blue megaphone on the top right of your chrome screen, your sound must be on, a signal with be sent out within your radius, easily sharing the URL with your students.
Use To
- Share a website
- Share an article
- Share a presentation
- Share a Doc for collaborative work
Screencastify
Screencastify free version allows you or your students to record your screen while recording your voice narration. It also allows recording via the computer's webcam and allows for easy sharing.
Use To
- Create a presentation
- Teach a how to on a particular Google App, website or activity on the computer
- Create a video for book talks and other projects
- Create a presentation for a larger audience that can be easily shared
This extension is particularly great for students who are learning to write research papers in including citations. This extension is a plagiarism checker for students and teachers. All you need to do it open the extension, paste the writing in the box and it will detect the pieces that are possible counts of plagiarism.
Use To
- Students can self-monitor to identify plagiarism
- Teachers can check suspicious information for plagiarism
Announcify
Announcify will read aloud a website that students have open. The extension will open a new tab with the text and begin reading aloud for the student. Students can select from 5 different English speaking voices, as well as from 15 other language voice types. They can choose the speaking speed and pitch to ensure they follow along as the text is read to them.
Use To
- Help struggling readers
- Re-enforce skills
- Help students identify words and letter sounds
The Grammarly extension is great for students and teachers! It scans your text in docs, emails, blogs, social media posts, for common and complex grammatical mistakes and spelling errors.
Use To
- Have students self-monitor and assess their own writing
- Proofread your own emails, letters home, and postings
- Help students identify common spelling and grammatical errors
Adblock automatically block unwanted advertisements on a website that you and your students are viewing.
Use To
- Prevent students from distraction of unwanted materials
- Streamline your lesson planning and instruction
Save to Drive
The Save to Google Drive extension allows students to save images, screen shots (we use this all the time in class!), and web content directly to their Drive. They can also control the destination of the materials so they stay organized.
Use To
- Help students stay organized
- Make sharing and saving materials and resources easier
- Use with Google Tone to make sharing and saving resources/ materials much easier and faster
TL;DR
Allows students to read a short summary of an article or report by simply clicking the TL;DR icon. TL;DR does not work on all articles but will work on most.
- Help students stay organized
- Make sharing and saving materials and resources easier
- Use with Google Tone to make sharing and saving resources/ materials much easier and faster
TL;DR
Allows students to read a short summary of an article or report by simply clicking the TL;DR icon. TL;DR does not work on all articles but will work on most.
Use To
- Teach students to summarize, using the summarized pieces ad models
- Teach students to read for important details
- Support struggling readers
- Teach students to summarize, using the summarized pieces ad models
- Teach students to read for important details
- Support struggling readers
These next two extensions are focused on helping teachers better support their students. Enjoy!
Doctopus and Goobric
Doctopus and Goobric joined forces to allow teachers to use rubrics created on Google Sheets to automagically score student work and make grading on a rubric much easier! You can also import students and assignments directly from Google Classroom. Grades are pasted into the doc and recorded in the original spreadsheet for easy data analysis!
Use To
- Easily grade student work
- Access and analyze data
Draftback allows you to go back into the revision history of any Google Doc you have editing rights to, so any that are submitted to you via Google Classroom Assignments will work.
Do you ever feel like a student may have not written the work they submitted to you? This extension is a great way to check, if students are typing at a quicker rate than you know they are capable of, or you see large chunks of writing being pasted into a document, these are red flags.
This can also help you to see errors that students are commonly making, or making corrections to that we may not see once submitted, being students may have proofread and used spell check and Grammarly.
Use To
- Verify original work
- Personalize learning
- Easily grade student work
- Access and analyze data
Draftback allows you to go back into the revision history of any Google Doc you have editing rights to, so any that are submitted to you via Google Classroom Assignments will work.
Do you ever feel like a student may have not written the work they submitted to you? This extension is a great way to check, if students are typing at a quicker rate than you know they are capable of, or you see large chunks of writing being pasted into a document, these are red flags.
This can also help you to see errors that students are commonly making, or making corrections to that we may not see once submitted, being students may have proofread and used spell check and Grammarly.
Use To
- Verify original work
- Personalize learning
