Greetings! I always come back from the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference with new ideas and new ways of seeing things. This year, my favorite discovery was Google Chrome Extensions. Although new to me, a dedicated Firefox user, Chrome extensions have been around for the past few years. Essentially, they are software programs that enhance the functionality of the Chrome browser. You download them from the Chrome Web Store and install them above your bookmarks on your bookmark bar while in Chrome. Confused? Not sure if you are interested? Give this a try. You will be glad you did!
1. Open your Chrome browser and sign in as you would to your Google account. In the top right-hand corner, above the bookmark bar, click on the Chrome customize icon (3 black lines).
2. Click on <More Tools> at the bottom of the list, then <Extensions>. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on <Get More Extensions>. You can now browse through all of the many extensions available to add to Chrome. You will notice there is a collections list on the left that will highlight extensions that may be of interest to you, but here are just a few that I have added already:
Announcify! - The only word for this is awesome. It converts web articles into speech, opens them in a new tab, and reads without having to select any text. The voice is more human-sounding than normal and a great feature is that it blurs out the text that is not being read, making it easy for students to track while listening. Options for the extension include adjusting speech volume, pitch, and rate.
Check My Links - Install this one and it will comb through all the links on any page, highlighting valid ones in green and broken ones in red. I am very excited about this one, as it will save me SO much time when updating the computer lab wiki.
One Tab - Have you ever started out looking for something on the web and ended up with 15 open tabs? With the click of this extension button, all those open tabs are reduced into a list in OneTab. Options within OneTab allow you to choose which websites you would like removed from the list, lock the list, name the lists, or share the list as a webpage.
Extensions Manager - This extension allows you access all of your other extensions with just a single click. You can look them over, disable or enable them, or even remove them from Chrome. Very helpful if you go extension-crazy, which I think I might be capable of!
There are many, many more extensions that could be helpful to you and your students. Have fun searching, and feel free to share your discoveries with the rest of us!
Rosanne
