Chrome Browser is actually a toolkit - can be personalized for what you need.
personalization includes themes, bookmarks, extensions. (What are good extensions? I don't have them but have heard some)
Incognito browsing allows students log in quickly without booting me out of my Google account. Also good with travelling website! Look up airline tickets without random price spikes due to history/cookie tracking, Also good with entering info into forms on computers you don't want to have your info.
Google URL box is actually called omnibox because of all the things it can do. In addition to regular url entry, it serves as a google search box, solves math problems, lets you look up flights by number, etc. My favorite recent discovery on this is that typing in "timer 5 minutes" pulls up a timer for 5 minutes - you don't even have to hit start!
right click on tabs gives you several options. The most useful/new for me are:
thing I already knew and loved: ctrl+shift+t (reopen closed tab) will reopen the tab you just closed. great for accidental closing.
fun fact: the name of the icons that show up in your bookmarks are favicons (sp?)
How to install:
Cool Extensions:
Tab scissors - splits your screen evenly in half between two tabs
Tab Glue - puts it back together!
Share to Classroom - two-click sharing of the page you're on to the class you want to add it to.
goo.gl - works like bit.ly or tinyurl - shrinks the url for any website - extension makes it faster than searching up! Also has links to copy into Google Classroom, instant QR code, can copy image and paste wherever. Wow!
Colorpick Eyedropper - helps you match exact colors you want to build flyers with. Pick exact school colors for color scheme on a flyer or something. Changes your mouse into crosshairs, lets you hover over any color and boom. Gives the 6-digit hex code to match exactly.
Onetab - puts a bunch of sites together. Good as a productivity tool as well as a way to share multiple links to student. Lets you name the group of links and then lets you share it as a web page! Creates link and QR code. Personal use: good for closing up at the end of the day to pick back up the next day where you left off.
Installing a theme is a good way to instantly see if you are on your account or not.