3 Great Chrome Apps to Help Students Effectively Search The Web

November 13, 2015
Being able to conduct smart search queries online be it on Google or any other search engine is absolutely an essential skill for the 21st century students. Smart searching is all about finding relevant and reliable content that matches your query with the minimum time possible. Google offers a wide variety of tips and tricks to help you become search savvy. Additionally, there are also some very good Chrome extensions that are also indispensable for doing online research. In today’s post we are sharing with you three of our favourite add-ons to use on your Chrome browser for a quick way to search the net.

1- Google Similar Pages

This is an excellent extension to help you find webpages similar to the one you are actually browsing. With a simply click, Google Similar Pages fetches a number of websites with content relevant to the one you are currently reading. This saves you time and makes finding relevant content much more easier.

2- Highlight to Search

Highlight to Search is another great Chrome add-on that allows you to look up  keywords in a webpage by simply highlighting them. ‘After you highlight keywords within a web page, you'll see magnifying-glass icon appear below the highlighted keywords.By either clicking on the icon or the keywords itself, search-box with Autocomplete enabled appears for you to search quickly and easily.’

3- SearchPreview

‘The single purpose of this extension is to enhance your search results pages. SearchPreview inserts site preview images (thumbnails) and related links (if available, some may be advertising) into your search result pages. Supports Google™, DuckDuckGo™, Yahoo™ and Bing™.’

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3 Powerful Twitter Chrome Extensions for Teachers

November 12, 2015
As a microblogging and social networking platform, Twitter provides endless possibilities for teachers' professional development.  From attending world EdTech conferences through the use of hashtags to creating PLNs to fall back on when looking for help or crowdsourcing resources for a particular research project, Twitter-literacy is absolutely an important literacy for the 21st century connected educator. We have written a lot on the importance of Twitter in education and have also reviewed several tools and apps to use for this purpose which you can access from this page. Today, we are sharing with you 3 powerful Twitter extensions for Chrome . These add-ons bring you the power of Twitter right into your browser allowing you to keep track of trending topics, join live conversations, streamline your timelines, create lists and collections and many more.

1-Silver Bird

Silver Bird is a Chrome extension that offers a number of interesting features for Twitter users. These include:keeping track of trending topics on Twitter, creating custom search queries, viewing all your tweets in a unified timeline, supports real time timeline updates, follow/unfollow users and many more.

2- Notifier for Twitter

As its name indicate, Notifier for Twitter is a Chrome extension that brings the power of Twitter right into your browser. Using Twitter’s streaming API, Notifier for Twitter keeps you updated with the recent tweets including DMs and replies which all appear instantly on your desktop. It also ‘ features a full timeline view available at all times from the browser toolbar, allowing you to read and compose tweets and DMs, as well as retweet, favourite and reply to tweets.’

3- TweetDeck by Twitter

This is definitely one of your favourite Twitter apps. It provides some really great features that include creating columns and lists, creating collections of your favourite tweets to share with others, scheduling tweets with images, ‘ join Twitter conversation by tweeting, sharing photos and links to news stories, and more.’

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4 Handy Extensions to Enhance Your Browsing Experience on Chrome

November 11, 2015
If you are a heavy user of Chrome browser  and always have many opened tabs in the same session then you should definitely check the add-ons listed below. These are extensions to help you better enhance your browsing experience and boost your productivity while you are on the net. You will be able to manage and organize your tabs into collections to save or share with others, close inactive tabs to save memory and speed up your Chrome, access closed tabs and many more. Go through the selection and see which add-on works for you the best. Enjoy

1- TooManyTabs

TooManyTabs is a very good add-on to use to manage multiple tabs on Chrome. It organizes all your opened tabs into a neatly sorted page where you can browse them. This is especially useful when you have a large number of tabs opened in the same session. TooManyTabs provides you with a bird’s eye view of all your opened tabs and you can even use the search functionality to look for a particular tab. Other features provided by this add-on include: restore recently closed tabs, suspend idle tabs to save memory, sort tabs by creation time, domain and title and many more.

2- The Great Suspender

‘The Great Suspender is a lightweight chrome extension to help reduce chrome's memory footprint for users that like to have too many tabs open at the same time. This extension will automagically unload each tab while retaining its favicon and title text. A tab can be restored by clicking anywhere on the page when it is needed. This reduces the number of dom elements on the page and ensures no memory leaks or excessive javascripts are running.’

3- Tabs Outliner

This is another wonderful add-on to use on your Chrome. Its Tree Style Tab feature provides you with an ultimate overview of all your tabs and windows. You can also use Tabs Outliner to annotate and add comments, to-do items and notes to your tabs and windows and organize them into hierarchies and groups.  Annotated tabs can be easily exported and shared to other platforms such as Google Doc, Word, and Evernote. Another excellent feature in this extension is the One Click Procrastination Stopper which allows you to ‘ to close all active tabs, but leave links to them in tree, and in the original context, with a possibility to restore everything anytime you wish. You will be able to stop your Net procrastination in one click!’

4- Session Buddy

‘Session Buddy is a session manager for your browser that allows you to:See all open tabs in one place; Save open tabs and restore them later. Great for freeing up memory and avoiding tab clutter; Recover open tabs after a browser or system crash; Organize links by topic and find them when you need them with keyword search; Easily consolidate link sets and eliminate duplicates; Export link sets in a variety of text formats for use in email messages, documents, spreadsheets, and online posts.’

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6 Powerful Chrome Apps for Classroom Management

November 6, 2015
For those of you using Chrome in their instruction, below is a collection of some of our favourite extensions to use for classroom management. Some of the things you can do with these add-ons include: monitoring students in-class behaviour,  create and organize assignments, track students grades and progress, organize both formative and summative assessments, generate report charts and many more.

1- Google Classroom

“Classroom is a new tool in Google Apps for Education that helps teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and easily communicate with their classes. Classroom helps students organize their work in Google Drive, complete and turn it in, and communicate directly with their teachers and peers.”
2- ClassDojo

“ ClassDojo helps teachers improve behavior in their classrooms quickly and easily. It captures and generates data on behavior that teachers can share with parents and administrators. ”
3- Class Charts

“Seating and behavior charts are an essential parts of any good teacher’s tool kit. They help organise students into appropriate learning groups and minimise school behaviour issues – the class teacher asserts their authority before the lesson even begins.”
4- LearnBoost

“The LearnBoost gradebook provides a free all-in-one classroom management solution for tracking student grades and progress, creating and sharing standards-aligned lesson plans, generating beautiful analytics and report cards, syncing calendars and schedules, and connecting with parents and students.”
5- Socrative Teacher

“Engage, assess and personalize your class with Socrative!Educators can initiate formative assessments through quizzes, quick question polls, exit tickets and space races all with their Socrative Chrome app. Socrative will instantly grade, aggregate and provide visuals of results to help you identify opportunities for further instruction.”

6- Exit Ticket

'This app is for both student and teacher use and can be used to deliver real-time formative and summative assessments in 'exit ticket' style delivery throughout a class period. ExitTicket enables personalized intervention and differentiation for every student, every class through in-classroom proven levers for real-time intervention & differentiation.'

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Secure Your Chrome With This Powerful Extension

September 26, 2015
If you use Chrome to navigate the web  then you definitely need to give this extension a try. Shield for Chrome, as its name indicates, is an add-on that protects your Chrome from bugs , malware, spyware and malicious extensions.We have been using it for a week now and it proved very useful. As you know, several extensions in the Chrome Web Store come in with destructive malware which could not only slow down your browser but could also jeopardize your computer’s operating system. With an extension like this you have at least an added layer of security.

Some of the features provided by Shield for Chrome include: stops over 100 adware, spyware or malware extensions that are currently available in chrome web store, monitors extensions and websites behavior to detect malicious patterns, shield code is protected to avoid bypassing by malware creators, and many more.

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6 Great Chrome Games to Boost Kids Strategic Thinking

September 17, 2015
Below is a collection of some of the best educational games available on the Chrome Web Store. We have scrupulously picked out the ones geared towards helping kids and young learners develop abstract and strategic thinking skills. From learning how to solve an infinite number of word search puzzles to mastering the art of fast typing, these games will lay out the learning foundation essential for kids cognitive development.

1- Word Search Puzzle

‘This word search puzzle game is one of the best of its kind. Try it and look for hidden words between letters of the alphabet. In every game there are 20 words from 1000+ words selected randomly and you have to find them.’

2- Little Alchemy

‘A simple but addictive game. Start with four basic items and use them to find dinosaurs, unicorns and spaceships! Explore what you can create just by mixing simple elements.’

3- The Elementals

This is a fun periodic table where every element has its own personality.

4- Mahjong Solitaire

‘Mahjong solitaire (sometimes referred to as Mahjongg) is a tile matching puzzle game. Beat this strategy game by clicking on matching sets of tiles to eliminate them.’

5- KeyHero

‘Key Hero is a great place to improve your typing skills. The game keeps track of all your performances (WPM and accuracy) and helps you understand what type of mistake you make.’

6- Cut the Rope

’A mysterious package has arrived, and the little monster inside has only one request… CANDY!  Collect gold stars, discover hidden prizes and unlock exciting new levels in this addictively fun, physics-based game!’

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7 Google Chrome Apps Every Teacher Should Know about

September 15, 2015
Chrome web store is teeming with all kinds of educational apps and education. You can easily search for and access apps you want to use in your instruction by simply refining your search query using criterion such as category, types, ratings and many more. You can also check this page for a quick list of some of the best educational Chrome apps to start with. We are also sharing with you this collection which comprises some of the most popular Chrome apps created and provided by Google. Check them out below.

1- Google Keep

Google Keep is an excellent tool to use for creating digital sticky notes. You can use both text and images to capture and share your notes. You can also use it to create to-do lists and bookmark content from the web.It has an intuitive and user friendly interface that makes it way simpler to navigate and control than is the case with several other note-taking apps out there.

2- Inbox

Inbox is a versatile app created by Gmail team to provide users  with an enhanced email experience. The app provides some cool functionalities to help you better manage and organize your inbox. Some of its features include: Similar messages are bundled together so you can deal with them all at once, you can add Reminders so your inbox contains all the things you need to get back to, Snooze emails and Reminders to come back when you are ready to deal with them and many more.

3- Google Classroom

‘Classroom is a new tool in Google Apps for Education that helps teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and easily communicate with their classes. Classroom helps students organize their work in Google Drive, complete and turn it in, and communicate directly with their teachers and peers.’

4- Google Tips

‘Google tips shows you the latest and greatest tips and tricks across your favorite Google products like Maps, Search and YouTube. For instance, did you know you can ask Maps to give you directions to your family or friend’s place, without having to type in their addresses every time? You can even browse tips by things you can do on the go, at home, at the office- or by product. Click any card that catches your eye and flip it over to find out more.’

5- Chrome Remote Desktop

‘Chrome Remote Desktop allows users to remotely access another computer through Chrome browser or a Chromebook.  Computers can be made available on an short-term basis for scenarios such as ad hoc remote support, or on a more long-term basis for remote access to your applications and files.  All connections are fully secured.’

6- Fusion Tables

‘Get more from data with Google Fusion Tables. Bust your data out of its silo! Combine it with other data on the web. Collaborate, visualize and share.  ’

7- Google Play Books

‘Choose from over 4 million books on Google Play and take your favorites with you for reading offline.It’s time to set your reading free. With Google Play Books for Chrome, you can use just about any device you own to read any book, anywhere.’

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Must Have Chrome Apps for The New School Year

August 20, 2015
You probably are already working on your digital toolkit making it ready for the start of a new school year. Part of your preparation will definitely consist of making decision on the kind of web applications and mobil apps you will be incorporating in your teaching. This means that you need to have a fairly decent knowledge of educational web tools out there and the potentialities they can offer to your instruction. To this end and to help you make informed decisions about the technology to use in your class,  we went ahead and did some digging into our archive and curated this collection   comprising some of the best educational Chrome apps out there.  We hope you will find it useful. Enjoy

1- Chrome Apps for Math Teachers

• GeoGebra
• Desmos Graphing Calculator
• Math Arcade Games
• Graph.tk
•  Buzz Math
• MathBoard Addition
•  Monster Math Flash Card
• Popular math

2- Chrome Apps for Recording and Editing Audio

• SoundCloud
•  Voice Recorder
• Vocaroo
• Twisted Wave

3- Chrome Apps for Annotating and Editing PDFs

•  DocHub
•  Notable PDF
• PDF Compressor
• Merge PDF

4- Chrome Apps for Bookmarking and Curating Content

• Padlet
• Diigo
• Scoop.it
• Pin It Button

5- Chrome Apps to Enhance Students Reading Experiences

• Readability
• Clearly
• Read Mode
•  Easy Reader

6- Chrome Apps to Enhance Teachers Productivity

• Session Buddy
• OneTab
• Session Manager
• TabCloud

7- Chrome Apps for Creating 3D Models

•  3DTin
• Design Something
• 3DView

8- QR Generator Apps for Chrome

• The QR Code Generator
• QRCode Monkey
• QR Code Generator by Unitag

9- Chrome Apps for Research Students

• Citelighter
• Mendeley
• Evernote Web Clipper
• EasyBib

10- Chrome Apps for Notetaking

• Evernote Web
• Google Keep
• Note Anywhere
• Quick Note

11- Chrome Apps for Screen Capture

• Screencastify
• TechSmith Snagit
• Lighshot
• Screen Capture

12-  Chrome Apps for Sketching and Doodling

• Google Draw
• Inspiration- Sketch & Draw
• Sketch Toy
• Sketchboard

13-  Chrome Task Management Apps

• Any.do
•  Wunderlist
•  Trello
•  Remember the Milk

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The 4 Educational Apps Featured in Chrome App Store This Week

August 12, 2015
As is the case once every week, we share with you here a list of educational apps that have been featured by Chrome in the education category. Most often, these are apps that have received a higher number of user downloads and interactions and therefore are deemed popular among the education community. This week’s list presents some wonderful apps that are predominantly math oriented. Check them out below. Enjoy

1- IXL

‘Explore over 4,000 standards-aligned skills with IXL, the world’s most popular math and language arts practice program. From perfecting probability puzzles to completing compelling compound words, learning has never been so much fun! As students earn enticing awards and certificates for reaching learning milestones, you can track their progress with real-time data reporting. ’

2- Desmos

Desmos is a good platform for math teachers and students. Desmos is a graphing calculator that allows you to easily plot functions, create tables, add sliders, animate graphs and many more.

3- Geogebra

‘GeoGebra (www.geogebra.org) is free dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that brings together geometry, algebra, spreadsheets, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package.’

4- Typing Club

Typing Club is a free game and educational program to help you learn fast typing.”Using this program, your typing speed will reach 10 to 12 words per minute rather quickly. From there practice on your normal typing activities to increase your speed to 40 - 90 Word per minute.”
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3 Awesome Chrome Extensions to Enhance Students Reading Experience

August 2, 2015
Below are some excellent Chrome apps to enhance students reading experience. The apps provide, among other things,  a clutter free and reader-friendly interface and eliminate distractive features around online articles and blog posts.

1- Clearly

‘With one click, Clearly makes blog posts and articles clean and easy to read. Clearly eliminates all distractions from your online reading experience, and even allows you to browse multi-page articles in one, seamless view.’

2- Readability

The official Readability extension for Chrome provides a better way to read online, turning any web page into a comfortable reading view right in your web browser. Some of its features include: Read Now" to disable surrounding webpage noise and clutter; “Read Later" to save content to your personal reading list; “Send to Kindle" to send any web page to your Kindle in a comfortable reading view; Tagging to help you keep your reading list organized and many more.

3- Text Mode

‘Browse the web without distractions via simple text based pages. Declutter the web by activating Text Mode. All pages load in text form (no images, animation or video) so content is easier to scan and read. ’

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