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News and Updates from the MASD Technology Integration Committee



Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Manage your learning environment with extensions

The first transfer goal in our digital learning curriculum is Empowered Learner. The focus is on being able to leverage the power of technology to improve your own learning. This can take many forms, but recently I've had several encounters that pointed to the need to know more about the uses (and abuses) of extensions. If you have no idea what that means, you're not alone. If you're already an extensions enthusiast, please use the link at the end of the page to share your favorites so we can all benefit!

Read on to find out how adding these little web programs (extensions) to your Chrome browser can help you and your students maximize the work you do online. We'll look at what extensions are, how to add and manage them, and share a few you might find really helpful in the classroom.

  • Chrome Extensions - What Are They and Why Should I Care?
  • Find and Manage Chrome Extensions
  • A Few Extensions You Might Want to Try...
    • Classroom/Instructional Extensions
    • Accessibility/Differentiation Extensions
    • Productivity Extensions
  • Extensions for Other Browsers
  • Share Your Favorite Extensions

Chrome Extensions - What are they and why should I care?

According to Google, extensions are "small software programs that customize the browsing experience." In other words, they are (mostly) helpful little tools that work with your web browser to allow you to do things more easily or efficiently. For example, there is no option in Google Docs itself to print a document that contains comments and have the comments visible on the printed copy. However, there is a Chrome extension you can use to make this happen.

There are hundreds of Chrome extensions available from the Chrome Web Store. As with most things, not all of these are productive. Part of being an Empowered Learner is the ability to customize one's learning environment in order to support the learning process. Managing their own extensions is one way for students to do that. Our students have the ability to add extensions to Chrome when they are signed into their district Google accounts. This is a good thing, as there are a lot of really great extensions that can enable students to make their online experience better fit their own learning styles and needs. However, it also means they might install extensions that don't really contribute to the learning experience. Having too many extensions - even helpful ones - can slow down the browsing experience or even cause problems with how Chrome functions. If students complain of these issues, ask them to check their extensions (keep reading to find out how) and offer them some ideas about how to manage them to maximize their effectiveness.

Find and manage chrome extensions

Chrome extensions are available through the Chrome Web Store. You could spend time just browsing through the store, but usually I find extensions when I learn about them through an app or from talking to someone else. For instance, in the example above about printing a Google Doc with the comments, here's the process I used...

Now let's see how extensions work. This video will show the extension for printing a Google Doc with comments in action, as well as another extension that helps to remove distractions from a webpage to make it easier to read.

Once you have a few extensions, you're going to want to know how to manage them. As I mentioned earlier, there are some really helpful extensions, but having too many extensions - or the wrong ones - can cause more problems than they solve. Fortunately there are solutions to help you turn extensions off when you don't need them or delete them all together. Watch this video to learn more.

a few Extensions you might want to try...

Classroom/Instructional Extensions

Google Dictionary - Click on any word on a website and get a definition, hear it pronounced, and dig further with a single click.

Google Keep - Save links to sites or highlight text on a site and save it to a note in Google Keep, along with the url. Great tool for research!

Google Translate - Click on a word to hear it pronounced and see its definition in English.

Insert Learning - Make any website interactive. Embed comments, questions, and discussions right onto the webpage. Students respond and you see their work. Integrates with Google Classroom. (Students must have the extension installed on their browser, too.)

Wolfram Alpha - A computational knowledge engine that delivers an answer to your query based on its computations of curated data. Click here for examples.

Accessibility/Differentiation Extensions

Announcify - Have an entire webpage read to you.

BeeLine Reader - Adds color gradients and other features to make reading a website easier. Free for limited use, but students and teachers can apply for free access to full version.

Focus Reader View - Eliminate distractions from a webpage to make reading easier.

Select and Speak - Highlight text and have it read aloud.

Productivity Extensions

Extensity - Easily manage all of your extensions in one place. If you're using extensions, I highly recommend this one!

One Tab - Find yourself with a dozen tabs open at the end of the day? Use the One Tab extension to quickly pull all those links into one list. Later you can restore one tab or the entire collection.

Screencastify - Use this extension to capture a recording (including audio) of all the activity in a tab. Use this to create quick tutorials to show students how to do something.

To browse all Chrome extensions, visit the Chrome Web Store. You can find more ideas about useful extensions for teachers and students at the following sites:


Even with all the Google Tools and Chromebooks we have, I realize some of you might prefer a browser other than Chrome. There are extensions for you, too! Check the links below to learn more:

What are your favorite extensions?

Have an extension that works well for you or your students? Share it here so we can all benefit!