If you own a Kindle, the Send To Kindle extension is a useful way to collect interesting articles, blog posts, webpages, etc. to read later on your Kindle.  

To use, just navigate to the article or webpage you want to read later and click the Send to Kindle extension.  You are offered to option to send the article, preview it to make changes, and if you select only a part of a page, you can send just the selected part directly to your Kindle.  

You will need to sign in to your Amazon account for your items to be available to your Kindle.

Click to get Send to Kindle in the Chrome Store.

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.

Save Text to Google Drive is a handy extension that takes saving webpages to your drive a step further.  When you use this extension, you are presented with all of the text on a given webpage.  You can cut out what is unnecessary (or unwanted) and save the text of the webpage directly to a Google Doc in your drive.  It even includes the link to the site for you, so you can go back to it at a later time if you need/want to.

What a great tool for students completing web research!

Click to get Save Text to Google Drive in the Chrome Store.

There are many ways to save your webpages and database articles directly to Google Drive when using Chromebooks with limited storage and multiple users.  By far, the easiest one I have seen is by simply using the print function.

When you try to print from a Chromebook, if a printer is not connected, the default will be to "Save as PDF."  If a printer is connected, you can still change the printer to be "Save as PDF."

When you click "Save," you will be directed to save to either your downloads or to Drive.  If you select Drive, it will allow you to choose the folder where you would like to save your Document.

Here are some other ways to save to your Drive!

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

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 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.

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!