#MTBoSBlaugust - Useful Chrome Extensions

 

Wow - what a week!  We've never had 7 days of pre-planning, but then again, we've never been in the middle of a global pandemic. 🙂

Several times throughout the week, I felt like I was working my tail off but had nothing to show for it at the end of the day, then by the time evening came, I was brain dead and ready for a break, which might explain the lack of blogging 🙂

One of my biggest tasks over the past week has been trying to replicate my home set-up on my school computer, which has its own set of technology challenges....

But one thing I've learned is the usefulness of various Chrome Extensions! :)

	With Distance Learning, one thing I learned early one was the usefulness of splitting my screen.  A lot of people like to have dual monitors, but I don't like hunting down my mouse, nor do I like the physical footprint of having two monitors on my desk.  But Dualless to the rescue! We use Google Meet for our classes, which has a really annoying issue of not being able to see what you are presenting plus being able to see your students.  So if I'm doing a live Desmos or presenting a slideshow, I have to flip back and forth on the tabs.  By using Dualless, I can pull those into two separate Chrome windows, click on the Dualless link on my browser toolbar and choose the split ratio I want to use.
	Another great extension I found this summer was the Video Speed Controller.  This allows me to speed up or slow down any video on YouTube, EdPuzzle, etc.  I've found it so useful, especially right now during our busy season and the 1.5 speed is about perfect for me!
	Inserting emojis into my messages, Desmos activities, and blog posts are so much easier now that I've installed the Emoji keyboard! This little extension pops down a menu that I can search, then when I click on an emoji, it automatically copies the emoji so I can paste it into my activity or email.  I'm really excited to use this extension in my Desmos activities as I plan to use emoji cues for note-taking, etc!
	Last spring, I found myself needing to annotate a website or a Desmos activity for a screencast, so Page Marker came in handy multiple times.  This extension isn't very fancy, but it gets the job done!  I can choose the color, the pen size and write as much as I want before clearing the screen or closing the extension.  When using it over a Desmos activity or slide show, you do have to switch to the arrow to navigate to the next slide, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty user friendly.
	In this season of making a lot of videos, I certainly can't leave off the Loom extension!  With a school email account, teachers are eligible for the free version of Loom Pro.  In the past, I've used Screencastify and Loom is very similar in terms of its ease of use.  I also like that Loom has some good editing features, plus a way for students to provide feedback via comments and/or emojis, and embeds easily into Canvas! :)

It's going to be a super busy weekend of lesson planning and finalizing my plan for Monday.  If you have any great ideas for the first day of distance learning, please let me know!  I'm also on the lookout for more useful extensions, so send those my way too!

Happy Saturday!