Technology has revolutionized every aspect of our lives. The education sector has seen technological advancements as well. From lecture slides to computer based learning, modern education is an amalgamation of a lot of these technologies. These technologies have allowed us to improve our productivity levels significantly. They have also enabled us to improve the efficacy of teaching methods within classroom settings. In the year 2020, the world changed. The pandemic presented a new set of challenges for the entire world. Schools and colleges shut down and education was hit the hardest. If you’re teacher, you might be teaching via online channels these days. Screens are the new classroom for most instructors. To assist you in your teaching practices, here are 4 Google Chrome extensions for teachers to boost your productivity and make your job easier:
EdPuzzle
Most lessons these days are happening online. Whether it’s Zoom, Google Classroom, Microsoft Meetings, or videos, it’s all online. Videos have become the forefront of online learning delivery. With EdPuzzle, you get an easily accessible button on any YouTube video and take clips from it to include in your own lesson. You can simply browse through YouTube’s recommendations, watch the videos while planning your lesson and take snippets.
EdPuzzle can also help you add your own narration and questions. This way, you can make sure students are not just skipping through videos and are really learning. EdPuzzle also helps you track metrics like completion rates and collect responses to questions asked within the video. The EdPuzzle Chrome extension for teachers is free to download. You can check out additional services on their website.
BeeLine Reader
We’d be kidding if we said this extension was just for teachers. This handy Chrome extension helps you read faster and easier. BeeLine Reader uses color gradients to make it easy for the eyes to stay focused. When it comes to reading long texts, maintaining focus can get hard. For efficient reading, this extension guides the eyes from one end of the line to the next – making reading seamless. The extension has been credited as impactful by the United Nations and have been featured in The Atlantic.
For teachers, it is really helpful during lesson planning activities. Since teachers have to go through long texts, it eases the reading process. For students, going through lesson notes and reading materials becomes a lot easier with BeeLine Reader as well.
EquatIO
Mathematics is very difficult to digitize. If you’re a math’s teacher, you’ll know what we’re trying to say. Writing even the simplest equations is hard on the computer. Fractions, exponential powers and other mathematical formulae are difficult to compose on the digital screen. EquatIO is a Chrome extension developed to make the lives of both math teachers and math students a lot easier.
The extension allows users to transcribe mathematical equation and symbols from a variety of different sources into digital format. For example, you could write an equation with a digital pen and it’ll take the photo and convert the equation into the digital format. Since every phone out there has touch screen, it’s very easy to write equations for lessons, quizzes and for online instruction.
TLDR This
We saved the best for the last. TL;DR; means ‘too long didn’t read’. If you’ve heard of this before you’d already know what this extension is all about. With TLDR This, you can easily summarize a piece of text, document of article. It also has a dedicated web app. When you’re neck-deep in lesson plans, assignments and papers to grade, it becomes really tedious to read through long texts. With this Chrome extension (possibly one of the best Chrome extensions for teachers), you can easily read a summary of the information the text contains within. The extension allows you to have a button available on Chrome’s toolbar which when clicked will automatically summarize everything for you.
Take a note though: don’t use it to summarize text written by students. Students need extra attention and it’s better to read through their text than to read an automatically generated summary.
We hope our recommended extensions make a difference for you. If you’re teaching online these days, you can use online tools like KeyboardingOnline to keep things fun and engaging. Students can brush up their typing skills alongside their research skills.