The Annotary extension offers several options for you to save and notate webpages.  After you set up your account, you can bookmark pages in Annotary with notes.  You can also create collections for organizing the bookmarks.  You can highlight webpages and then share them with people with your highlights as well.

This would be a great way to collect information for research or to do collaborative research.  They even have community bookmarks and highlights!


Click to get the Annotary extension in the Chrome Store. 

Readability is an extension that is particularly good for students (or people) who are easily distracted by a busy website. When you use Readability, it strips the advertisements, images, and other extraneous items from a webpage, so you can read just the article you want.

Some of the nice features of Readability are that you can save articles to read later, and you can send them to your Kindle.  You can also change the font and appearance of the article to make it more "readable" for you!

Click to get the Readability extension in the Chrome Store.

TechSmith Snagit allows you to take a screenshot that will automatically save to your Google Drive.  Some of the wonderful features of Snagit are that you can select the area of the screen to save, name the screenshot, and you can markup your screenshot with arrows, rectangles, circles, or text before you save it.

When you download the TechSmith Snagit App, it will create a TechSmith folder in your Drive where any screenshots you make using Snagit will automatically be saved.  Also download the extension, as it works with the app to allow you to quickly select the area of the screen to save and will open the app for you to edit the screenshot (or not).

Because I have seen so many students have trouble with saving things to their Drives on the Chromebooks, this is a nice and easy option for them!

To get the app and the extension, go to the Google Chrome Store: TechSmith Snagit

Booktrack allows your classes to publish online while also adding a soundtrack to their publications.  Sign up as a teacher and create a class, and enroll your students.  There are many publications already there, including Romeo and Juliet and other classroom readings, but students can also publish their own writings to the classroom. 

Booktrack has a series of ambient sounds that students can select to go along with their writing.  They can also change the soundtracks as the mood or tone of their publications change. Students are also free to record themselves reading their essays, which is very helpful in the editing process or to provide accessibility to students who may need text to speech.  It can also be helpful to students studying world languages.

Using booktrack is pretty easy, and students can create or upload covers for their writing as well.  It can add a new dimension to projects in any subject area.

You can access Booktrack directly online, or get the app from the Chrome Web Store here: Booktrack App

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.