If you have your students complete an assessment via a form, and you have multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions, Flubaroo will grade them for you!  Some of our teachers have already enjoyed using this tool, so I created a guide for others who might be interested in giving Flubaroo a try!

I have trained many of our staff members in using Doctopus and am pleased to see how many are using it independently.  As they are getting more adept with Doctopus, they are starting to use Goobric to help with grading as well.  For teachers who haven't used either yet but are interested, or for those who have used it, but like a step-by-step reminder of how to use it, I created this Google Doc to guide them through the process:

If you are interested in incorporating gClassFolders to organize the work you share with your students, they are still working on the Add-On, but you can use the functionality through Doctopus.  Here is a bit of information about that as well:

The Autocrat Add-On is a great way to take a spreadsheet and input the data into a Doc or PDF template.  You can make certificates, letters, and more using that.  At NBC, we have used it to take student test submissions from a form to create separate documents. Then teachers can grade and/or comment and share back with each individual student.  Here is a Google Doc I created to give step-by-step assistance with the staff in that process:

Merge Values is an add-on that you can use on Google Sheets.  This is great when you have items in columns in a spreadsheet where you would like them to merge into one cell.  The concatenate formula I have used in the past allows you to do this, but I have had to maintain the data in the cells being combined or use extra steps to extract the combined cells.  For example, I create spreadsheets with student names and user IDs on them.  Their Google apps account requires the email address, so I need to append @schooldomain.com to each student's user id.  Merge Values allows me to do this very easily.

After I installed the Add-on, I created a spreadsheet with the names and User Ids.  Then I created a column with @schooldomain.com down the entire column.  When I started the Merge Values Add-on, a sidebar appeared with various options:

There is a variety of options, but by clearing the contents of the selected cells and deleting options to separate the values, I was able to create the student IDs as email addresses much more quickly than I had in the past.

If you would find it useful to merge data from cells in a spreadsheet, open a new spreadsheet, go to Add-ons, go to Get Add-Ons, and install the Merge Values add on.

The PicMonkey extension is a pretty impressive image editing tool.  If you find an image on a webpage that you want to download and/or edit, click on the PicMonkey extension.  You will get a group of thumbnails that includes all of the images on a given page.  Select the picture you want to edit.

The picture opens up with an array of editing tools.  From the simple tools like cropping and resizing to more complex options like color and lighting filter effects and adding text, overlays, or frames or creating collages - PicMonkey has it.  You can also use many editing tools designed just for human photo subjects like blemish correction, red eye fixes, adding hair, teeth whitening, changing eye color, and so much more.

It is a pretty thorough image editor for one that it free and completely online, and definitely handy when using ChromeBooks.

To get this great tool, at the Google Chrome Store, go to PicMonkey!  It is also available as an app if you prefer.

There are a lot of screenshot helpers out there, but I am currently favoring the Nimbus Screenshot extension.  With Nimbus, you are offered a variety of screenshot options.  You can opt to screenshot the visible part of the page or a selected area of the page.  It also provides the option of selecting an area and scrolling, so you can select part of what you see and scroll down to get the entire area you would like.  You can also get a screenshot of the entire page (watch out, that can get long!).  

Nimbus also offers options to edit your selection, save it, or copy it for pasting.  With so many options available in a quick tool, NImbus is an easy choice to make!

Head to the Google Chrome store to get Nimbus Screenshot.

Teachers who have been using Doctopus have mentioned that it can get a bit troublesome toggling from tab to tab to provide feedback to students while they work.  The Too Many Tabs extension can help with the clutter.  Too many tabs will convert all of your tabs to a visual group that allows you to see the tab titles and a small view of the content of each tab -- all in one location!

To the left, you see all of the tabs currently open.  On the right are "suspended tabs."  These are tabs that you had open, but that you wanted to save for later.  This keeps them accessible, but doesn't slow down the computer memory.  If you click on a suspended tab, it will reopen.  If you click on the tabs to the left, you will go right to that page.  You can also search the tabs or sort them by name, domain, or creation time.  Suspended tabs can also be searched and sorted.

You can delete suspended tabs at any time, and they will remain there until they are deleted.  So, if you have tabs suspended and you go away for a week, they will still be there when you return.  This could be useful when you have something you want to refer to later, but that you do not want to bookmark.

If you are using Doctopus and you have many students' work opened, you can see the names of the open documents to know which tab belongs to which student's work.  It can certainly help eliminate some confusion while you are trying to work on feedback.

And, if you are like me, you have lots of tabs open all of the time!  This can help you manage them a bit.

To get this extension in the Chrome Store, go to Too Many Tabs.

This is an extension that I find really exciting and useful specifically for our staff members using AutoCrat to deliver benchmarks.  Lazarus automatically saves students' work as they fill in forms (any form - not just Google forms).  That way, if a computer crashes when someone is in the middle of an exam (as did happen for many of our students!), their work is saved. 

How does it work?  When the student reopens the form, a small yellow ankh appears as they type on the right-hand side of the box:

This lets you know that Lazarus recovered information from that box.  Clicking the logo will allow students to select what they had already typed and lost. 

If you are interested, go to the Chrome Store to get Lazarus!

Tab Scissors and Tab Glue are two very simple extensions that can be quite effective.  Tab Scissors will allow you to take 2 open tabs and quickly divide them into 2 side-by-side windows.  This would be useful when completing research.  For example, if you are gathering information on one website and taking notes in EasyBib, it would separate the two tabs into side-by-side windows allowing you to easily use both pages at once.

Can you do this without an extension?  SURE, but this saves some steps!

Tab Glue puts the two pages back together.  Or if you have two Chrome windows open, tab glue with put them together.

Find them at the Chrome store here: Tab Scissors and Glue

NiftySplit takes the same concept a bit further.  With Nifty Split installed, you can right click on any link on a webpage, and the option "Open as NiftySplit Window" appears.  Selecting that will split the screen with two windows - the link you right-clicked will appear in the right window, and the existing page will remain on the left. Where it gets fancy is that when you navigate in the window on the left side, any link you left click on while in NiftySplit mode will open in the right screen, so you can consistently change what appears on the right screen. Hitting Shift click will open a link in the left window.  Play around with it, and you will see what happens.  Pretty nifty!

Find NiftySplit at the Chrome store here: NiftySplit

As many of you know, I am a huge Google fan, and love to explore whatever Google has to offer.  I have trained some of you on basic Google features and advanced ones!  I figured it was time to create a space to share any small (or large) Google features, apps, extensions, etc. that might make your lives, teaching, and learning easier!  So here it is, where students and staff already go to get my advice!