Supercharge your Google Apps with Add-ons and Chrome with Extensions

ICYMI - From today's Mimi Charnoff Professional Development Day, my list of my go-to Add-ons for Google Apps (Docs, Forms, Slides) and my favorites extensions for Chrome.

REMINDER: Extensions only work in Chrome on a Chromebook, a PC or a Mac. They do NOT work on Chrome on a phone or tablet (iPad, etc.) as they are not true Chrome browsers.

Google Doc Add-ons
Change Case	For those typing mistakes - ALL CAPS all gone
Extensis Fonts	Find precisely the right font
Kaizena	Add voice comments to a shared doc thru Google Classroom
Highlight Tool	Share labeled highlighter categories
Sefaria	Add Jewish texts directly to docs
In an open Google Doc, go to Add-ons.

Google Form Add-ons
123RF Stock Photos	Free photos to insert into Forms
All Questions Required?	For Quizzes - Click when finished
CheckItOut	For keeping track of inventory
Form Publisher	Convert to Doc, Slide, Sheet
Form Limiter	Limit time or number of responses
PaperScorer	Create bubble sheet from form - scan w/ phone to score

Google Slides Add-Ons - NEW!
AdobeStock	Free photos to insert into Slides
ShutterStock
Unsplash Photos
Pear Deck	Create formative assessments and interactive slides
Slides Toolbox	One-click for repeated tasks

Supercharge Chrome with Extensions
Office Editing for Docs, Sheets and Slides	Edit Microsoft Office files with converting to Docs, etc.
Save to Pocket	Save articles to read later
AdBlock	Blocks ads online
Convert web page Adobe PDF	Does what it says
Share to Classroom	Post or push site to Google Classroom
Send from Gmail	Click and e-mail webpage
Google Keep Extension	Save directly to Keep
Mercury Reader	Declutters distracting pages
Readability Redux	Declutter and open multi-page articles
ShoutKey	Create a temp, real-word URL shortcut
Empty New Tab Page	New tabs open blank
Google Dictionary	Double-click on a word for its definition
OneTab	Turn all your tabs into 1 link page
Google Input Tool	Translate, transliterate into other languages
G Suite Training	On-screen tutorials within Google Apps
Accent Grid	If you need to insert foreign accents
Alice Keeler Gradebook Split	Opens Rediker in parallel window from Classroom
Drive20	Opens up to 20 docs in separate tabs

Training for Google Apps

Don't walk, RUN! Run to the Chrome store and install the extension for Training for Google Apps.

Have you ever been stymied, wondering how to do something in Gmail, or Google Classroom, or Docs, or Slides, or Sheets or Forms, to name a few? Did you know you can have a built-in tutorial that doesn't even require you to leave the browser window in which you are working?

Whenever you go into various Google Apps for Education, you will see this little symbol in the right-hand corner:

Click on it and a searchable menu will pop up.

There are lots of items to choose from, or you can search for help on a specific topic. When you choose an item, either a video window will overlay on the screen with a tutorial, or you will get actual prompts (like CLICK HERE) that walk you through the steps.

I've already learned how to do several things that I never thought possible in Google Docs! Give it a try today!

Lesson Planner Part Two: Display

In my previous post, I described creating a Google Form to use as on online lesson planner.
Now I will describe what I am doing with the data.

A Confession

All I really want to do with my data is display it pretty much the same way it looked in my old paper lesson planner. Boring and unimaginative. I know. (I'll get a little more exciting with it in a bit.)

The experimental Google app Fusion Tables really fit the bill. (NB - I am having limited success  getting it to work on my Chromebook, just my desktop / laptop. Opening it from this page seems to work, however. )

.

Click "Choose File" and find the Google spreadsheet that you made from your Google form. Allow it access to your Google Drive if it asks nicely.

Follow the prompts, clicking "Next" until you reach the end product.

Choosing "Cards" will give you all your classes in individual blocks.

Click the pull-down menu under Filter if you just want to see one of your classes.

You can copy the blocks if you wish. They will paste into Word (or Google Docs, of course) as a table, and you can format it as you wish.

The final post in the series will cover some other ways of organizing and displaying your data from a Google spread sheet.

Lesson Planner Lost & Found

Although I have moved much of my life online (attendance and grades, file storage, bill paying, shopping) I have yet to find an online app or program that could replace the same type of wire-bound lesson planner that I've been using for 28 years.

I wasn't sure what I was looking for, exactly, but I felt, as Justice Potter Stewart said in an entirely different context, that "I [would] know it when I see it."

I finally found a fully customizable program that gave me exactly what I wanted (more on that in a bit), only to be disappointed to receive an e-mail that it was eliminating the free version, and the features that I wanted would now cost me $14.95/month. No thank you. I could get HBO for that.

But having had the program, albeit briefly, it finally clarified for me the criteria I needed to design one on my own. I wanted something that would differentiate between my classes, add a date stamp, give me room to describe what I taught, what got sent out to my students and whether I posted any handouts or SMARTBoard notes to Google Classroom.

The first part of my solution has been Google Forms. (I know, right? It was there all along along, like the Purloined Letter, or the ability to go back to Kansas.)

If you're unfamiliar with Google Forms, I'll provide a brief tutorial. If you are familiar with it, check out the next post, which will detail  the ways I am organizing and displaying all this data once I collect it.

Setting up the Google Form

What follows is what I did to meet my needs. You can set it up however you wish to meet your own needs.

Go to Google Forms (or just Google it) and choose a new document. Click on the first "Untitled Question," rename it Date. In the pull-down menu on the right, choose Date.

Click the + on the side to add another variable, and rename it. This spot is going to be for my classes, so I will name it "Class" and I am going to use a Dropdown menu and add each of my classes.

For the description of my lesson (again, click the + and rename the question), I might need lots of room, so I will choose Paragraph.

For my handouts (or this year, with 1:1 Chromebooks, send-outs), I will just choose the Short Answer.

For the last piece, a reminder whether I posted anything to Google Classroom, I just used a Multiple Choice question with two options - Yes or No.

 I have taken this form and put a link to it on my Bookmarks Bar in Chrome.
Next post: Now that we are collecting this data. what do we do with it?

UPDATE: I ended up adding two more categories - one for Homework and a follow-up to Post to Google Classroom - If so, then what?

UPDATE #2: I realized that I really didn't need all of this information as the semester wore on. To streamline the process I eliminated the Homework entry and the Handouts entry, as it was duplicated by the What did I post to Google Classroom entry.