APPS for Teachers

                                                 Helpful APPS for Teachers

I've learned a new lesson when working on blog pages, save and update before trying out new apps & extensions...pages don't auto save...grrrr!  So I'll begin again:

Google Calendar
If you haven't started using this Google Calendar, start TODAY! You can plan out a week, a month, or year of meetings, curriculum units, and personal events, and more.  It will even send you a text or email to remind you of your event and it's already installed on your chromebook. You will find it either in your drive or in your apps, I've pinned it to the bottom of my screen so that I can have quicker, easier access to it. Our school is working toward having all committee heads submit a Google Calendar so that we can coordinate better & work toward eliminating scheduling nightmares! Just a few calendars that you will soon be able to subscribe to will include Sports, Community Ed, Staff Dev., Technology, Staff Meetings, Child Study... Nate has already created a District Calendar. All you have to do is subscribe to it to start using it to reference today!

If you want to start learning more about how to use Google Calendar, here's a link to help you get started: Google Calendar Tutorial
Or you could just play around with it and use this as a reference when you get stuck!

Sometimes it just easier to learn by watching a video:

LastPass
This extension will keep all your passwords for you! No more trying to remember all those pass words for the 100+ sites you'll soon be using, or trying to use the same password to keep things easier for yourself, but endangering the security of your information or the information of your students!  Last pass will even generate complicated passwords for you. Just don't lose your Last Pass password! Download it from the Chrome Web Store! The icon will appear at the top right of your search screen.
Here's a short video link to learn more about it:    Last Pass Video

AdBlock
Tired of those seemingly front-loaded ads that come up all over your page when you're searching for something? Install the AdBlock extension and they disappear. It's available in the Chrome Web Store. It will automatically send you to a solicitation to purchase something, but it works with NO purchase, just close out of it & an icon should appear on the bar at the top right, unless you feel like donating to the advertisers cause of course!
AdBlock for YouTube
This extension completely gets rid of those annoying YouTube ads that are sometimes inappropriate for students and interfere with watching the videos you want students to view during classtime.  (It will also redirect you to another page, but no purchase necessary to use it!) Find it on the Chrome Web Store.

SnagIt
I love this extension! Sometimes when I'm looking for things I need a quick reminder of what I saw that I might want to "steel" or how to do something, and after all "a picture is worth a 1,000 words" right? Snag it is a quick screen shot of whatever page you are on. You CAN select a specific section, or just take a picture of the whole page. You can also type on it after you've snagged it and put squares or arrows to highlight areas. The best part is, it AUTOMATICALLY creates a file in your drive called "Tech Smith" where it saves everything you've snagged! I can't wait to let my kids use this also! SO easy!  Download it from the Chrome Web Store.

Clearly
Doing research for a project or getting something ready for a presentation? This extension gets rid of everything useless on the page you are on, and just gives you the basics. Especially helpful for PRINTING! No more 40 page documents half full of advertising spaces or other reference sources. Download Clearly from the Chrome Web Store. By itself it is simply a document condenser. If you are planning on printing or just using it as a reference immediately, it's all you need. IF you want it to save and store your documents for use later, you also have to install Evernote from the Chrome Web Store. Both are free!


VoiceNote

I can't wait to try this out with kids next year. If you have ever used the microphone to record your speech on your cell phone, this app does the same thing on your chromebook. Download the app from the Chrome Web Store, open it, and you can start recording. Have you ever been doing a classroom writing together, where students are generating a story, and you just can't keep up with their ideas as you hastily put them up on the smart/mimio board? You could sit and type it, but that ties you to your keyboard. Now you can have them say their sentences into the microphone & it will record their thoughts, helping speed up the process and giving them more time working on their own writing. Editing is easy as well and you can save it to continue to work on it later. I'm not sure about giving this app to students yet, but we might try it at a station...

Camera
This app is downloaded but not enabled on your students' devices. I had Nate enable it for 2nd & 3rd graders because we are going to be using Blogger and I want the students to have access to their camera to record images of projects they are working on and of course of themselves. There are lots of fun settings to go crazy with. Pictures save to FILES and are only on your student's device until they drag them into their drives (if they want to use at a later time) Just remember, if you open this up for your students, with picture taking ability comes responsibility. Students can now easily share items with one another and you may not even know it.



  Lucid Chart 
This app is already downloaded on your chromebook & would be cool to use during pre-writing/brainstorming times when you are looking for students to start linking ideas together to form paragraphs. Or could be used for Science/Social Studies writing or project ideas.

LucidPress
This app makes fun colorful invitations, pamphlets, brochures, menus...lots of fun things and you can download them right to your drive and print them! Easy enough to use, your students could make them!

EyeDropper
This app allows is more for fun! I tend to like it when my picture outline color matches my text or a piece of clip art in something I'm making.  You can use the color picker to pick colors from web pages or anything you are working on to match it to existing work! I used it when making the retirement pictures to color match the artwork. 


Symbaloo
This app is a visual way to navigate the internet. Many of our teachers have jumped on the Symbaloo bandwagon, so to speak. It's a fantastic way to organize your sites so that you have them all in one place, similar to a website, but with tiles so that students can click on a tile and go to a website or any other resource you've shared with them. A free version will get you all the space you need to store things, but a paid version ($35/year to be shared at grade level) will get you organizational delight. It is fairly time consuming to accumulate those resources, so keep in mind how much time you will spend using it & if it's worth the money. Exactly the same thing can be accomplished using Google Docs, Google Classroom, Blogger, or Google Sites; all of which are free resources and just as easy to use, once you are used to it. Consider using one of these sources possibly, until you have accumulated so many resources that you don't know what to do with them! Symbaloo is the only paid site I'm listing and only because so many Blackduck teachers are promoting it with other teachers. I think it's a valuable addition to our resources, but it isn't necessary for everyone

(Of course, you CAN get a paid subscription to just about ANY of the above apps, sites, extensions if you really want to use them intensively....but most work pretty well, with what you will likely use them for, with only the free version!)



This list is a short summary of things that I've found that work in my classroom & I hope they might work for you. Of course, I didn't come up with any of these ideas, so a big thanks should go to Kelly Weets, our presenter who compiled the above sources for us to delve into. This last link is to the doc that she shared wiith usduring her presentation which has SO MANY MORE incredible ideas to start using- in your spare time!!
Kelly Weets' Apps, Add-Ons & Extensions