5×5 Learning: Clean up your Reading

Day 5 of 5 finds us on the doorstep cleaning up what an otherwise very cluttered and distracting online environment usually is found when students and teachers are surfing and researching on the WWW.
One such chrome extension that declutters is Readability. This extension has been around as a typical toolbar add-on for many years.
BEFORE Readability chrome extension is used:

 

AFTER Readability “Read Now” is chosen:

Users can personalize the reading environment within Readability (black background with white text, white background with black text, larger or smaller columns, different fonts). They copy this text and add it to a Google Doc, MWord or copy the link and insert it into a website or document. They can also use a text to speech reader (like from RW4GC or Speak It!). Little to no distraction, all text, all clean reading. Now that I like.

 

5×5 Learning: Have the Right Chrome Extensions at Your Fingertips

In this day 4 of 5 looking at chrome extensions. Users who frequent the Chrome Web Store are most likely expanding their enabled extensions collection and their toolbar may not be well organized. This is where today’s chrome extension comes in.

Extensity is a hard working, yet easy to use chrome extension that integrates all your current chrome extensions and chrome apps into one place. I really enjoy being able to enable/disable chrome extensions quickly. I may want to use 5 specific extensions, so I can click these within Extensity and disable the rest (not delete) so that they are the ONLY extensions in my toolbar. This is great for students who may use different extensions in different classes. It helps to declutter the top toolbar where enabled chrome extensions plant themselves. I also appreciate the ability to open a chrome app from here as well instead of making my way to a chrome launcher on the left side of my screen.

 

 

5×5 Learning: Upgrade Your Cultural Status

Day 3 of 5 showcases a robust extension that will have you learning something new every time you click on a new tab or want to delve further into a historical, art, cultural topic with your students.

Google Art Project was developed by the Google Cultural Institute. This extension displays artworks from various museum and gallery collections all over the world. And your frequented sites are still available by clicking the bottom right hand corner icon.

 

5×5 Learning: Short is Sweet

Today is day 2 of 5 of a week full of quick learning opportunities this week on useful chrome extensions.

While researching and finding information on the WWW can be a daunting task due to the number a hits a topic/subject area may return, it’s when you actually find something of use that may cause some trouble. As in, those extra, extra, extra long links that come with the online resource. Just copying and pasting into a document or website is really bad etiquette unless you are teaching students how to read where a link originates from. And adding to a highlighted keyword/expression just brings up the long link once a person clicks on the word (which I find messy).

Take time to shorten those long links with a URL shortener. There are several out there. Today, I am showcasing goo.gl URL shortener. After installing this from the Chrome Web store, users can be surfing the WWW, come across some information of their liking and choose the goo.gl URL shortener chrome extension which automatically pops up a shortened link that can be copied or use a QR code. This allows the user to input this link into an existing document, email, attached to a highlighted keyword, write on a whiteboard, etc. It’s fast and easy to use.

 

5×5 Learning: Chunk it out; your reading of course!

This 5×5 Week of Learning will be filled with five different chrome extensions that engage and support teachers and students.

Announcify is a chrome extension that reads text to the user. It cleans up the online text by opening a new tab and then commences to read to the user. The paragraphed text being read is in focus while all the surrounding text is blurred out.

This is fantastic to use with students who are easily distracted with all the interactive online content surrounding an article/post. As well it reads quite well with access to 22 different voices/languages and speaking rates. (Change this in the Settings > Announcify > Options > Text-to-Speech.)