Chrome Apps and Extensions
Season 1- Episode #4
This episode of the Disruptive Teaching Podcast focuses on Chrome extensions and Chrome apps and discusses the difference between the two of them.
Cassie shares her favorite extensions, SnoozeTab which helps keep tabs under control.
And we introduce Bucket and Bones (who you may hear snoring at some point in the background!)
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or hit Play Below.
For more of Bucket and Bones follow them on Instagram @BucketandBones
Transcript
Welcome to the Disruptive Teaching podcast, a podcast about upsetting the average teaching and increasing your ability to reach every student in your classroom. We will focus on high and low tech tools for your classroom, along with a variety of assistive technologies that will help you create environments that are inclusive engagement.
Hi, I'm Cassie Frost, a former special education teacher specializing in emotional and behavioral disabilities and current Assistive Technology Specialist.
Hi, I'm Carolyn Meronek, a speech language pathologist who has been working in the public school system for the past 12 years. I have worked in a variety of settings and also have a special education background.
Welcome to Episode Four. Today we are going to talk a lot about Google Chrome. We will be talking about apps and extensions, the differences between the two of them and we are going to wrap up this podcast with a new segment featuring free tools. Each episode, we are going to look at a free tool, whether that's an app, an extension and iOS app, something that is free and can be used in your profession immediately. Let's get started. So today, we're going to start off talking a little bit about Chrome extensions. If you haven't used a Chrome extension yet, you're definitely missing out. Something that I use quite a bit. We could laugh hysterically at the number of extensions that I have, well, that we both have. Okay, fair enough. I haven't looked at your browser in a little while.
Now I've got a lot. Okay, but good.
So, um, extensions, if you're using a Chrome web browser, keep in mind, these do not work in Firefox, or IE Internet Explorer or anything like that. These are specific to Chrome. And the actual definition of an extension is actually just a small software program, that customizes your browsing experience. So instead of being something that, you know, changes your whole website or takes you to a website, it just changes little features of the browser from like the assistive tech standpoint or the organizational standpoint. Extensions are phenomenal because they just kind of change things up so they work best for you.
Right? So one example is to be able to use something as simple as a different font. So if you're working with a student who is dyslexic, the dyslexic font, and there's several out there, would certainly be helpful for those students to be able to read those pages easier.
Correct. So the way that you're gonna find these, and we're going to be talking about them quite a bit more as far as specific extensions. But for today, what we kind of want to let you know is if you're interested in learning more about the extensions, and it's something you haven't used in the past, the place you're going to go is to the Chrome Web Store. Now if you're in the Chrome browser, on the upper left hand side, there's going to be nine dots kind of stack and a three by three pattern on it's gonna say apps next to it. If you click on that, you're going to have some symbols that come up and one of them is going to be a link to the Chrome Web Store. I typically forget to click on that. I don't know why I'm so typically what I hope tell people is actually just just search Chrome Web Store. The link is like the first link and you don't have to do anything fancy.
So I bookmarked it.
You bookmark it. Yeah, I'm actually
Well, it took me a while to get smart enough to bookmark it, because I just kept searching for it over and over again. I'm like, how about we just bookmark this because I'm in here, like, at least weekly.
That seems reasonable, except I have so many bookmarks, and it's kind of the last land of stuff.
I'll continue to you know, search, but it is a good idea if you don't have the last land. I do. Um, so when you go to the Chrome Web Store, you have the ability to browse or search for specific apps. And as we go along here, we're going to start giving you apps or extensions that you might be interested in. Um, but in the meantime, if you're interested or if you hear about other ones along the way, you simply are saying Search for it and click Install when you find what you want. Once you click Install just be aware, you're going to be asked to agree to a whole bunch of permissions. Certain extensions are going to need to read the sites you're on. Certain ones are going to need to know your login, there's going to be different things that they allow. Typically, I will allow them on my personal account. Now, your school might be a little bit different with that. Next episode, we're going to talk more about data privacy and how that works as schools and what permissions they're asking for.
And it's a little different to as a teacher account versus a student account, too. So most districts will let you do just about anything that's like reasonable to at least try those things in your school account. However, there's definite rules for what the students can and cannot do. So we'll talk about that more later.
Absolutely. So again, if you find an extension that you want, you may be best to try it out on a personal account or home account to see if you even like it before you bring it up with your school to see if it's something you want to do go further, we will be putting up a video on YouTube. By the time this is live, it will be there. So go ahead and visit our website at disruptive dash teaching or on our YouTube channel for a walkthrough quick, you know, 90 second video on how to install an extension.
Where an extension changes the browser experience and/or the websites you go to a Chrome app is a small program or application within the Chrome browser, sort of like Android or iOS apps.
Where we actually were talking about extensions just a few minutes ago, and how to add those and where they live in the toolbar, and how they change. An apps gonna run a little bit different, you're still going to go to the exact same place you're going to go to that Chrome web store to get it You're going to install it the same way you're going to click Install accept those permissions. But then they're going to actually be in separate applications. So they're going to be kind of like a game, or organizational tool, word processors, things like that. So just like you would have maybe on your phone, or an iPad, they're going to be apps, but specific to the Chrome browser. One thing to be aware of, is Chrome Apps only work on a Chromebook. Right. So about three, four or five years ago, you could use apps on any device as long as you were using a Chrome browser.
So about a year ago, they went to just using them on Chromebooks.
Yeah, so kind of like you can only use an iOS app on an Apple device. You can only use Google Play on Android. Actually, you can use those on Chromebooks too, but that's another story. Um, you can only use Chrome apps on a Chromebook now. Right. So if you are a Chromebook district or work with Chromebooks lot apps are pretty cool. They're coming a long way.
Yes, they've grown a lot. Um, we use some of those for some things that our students do at school. But as they are developing, I think we're going to probably be using more of those down the road,
It seems like they're starting to be a little more of a competition. At first, there wasn't really a lot of touch technology for them as more touchscreen Chromebooks are coming out. We're starting to see more like some tracing apps and things like that. So one of the things we've ran into is, you know, iPads are great for like fine motor skills, tracing apps, some of those early childhood games. The Chromebooks just the Chrome Apps couldn't do. But slowly, I think now that it's went to that Chrome, book specific, they're starting to build those a little bit more,
I think, to the there's so many different features that you can buy in different Chromebooks like you can have Chromebooks have touchscreens now. So you can do a lot of those things that weren't even possible, you know, three, four years ago.
Correct. So hopefully, we're going to start seeing more of those Chrome apps, I know it's something of every three or four months, I kind of take a dive into it again to see what we can find that's comparable to iOS. So as we find them will definitely bring them up. And if you find any of them, feel free to leave notes. If you think there's ones that we should check out, definitely visit the website and underneath the podcast episode, leave us some comments with some apps that you think we should check out.
And then something else to just kind of keep in mind if you find one that you kind of like but aren't super impressed with, you might want to download it and keep it around and then check in on its progress, you know, as in a couple months and see if they've developed that app a little bit more because some of those start out kind of clunky, but they get better over time. So absolutely. Think about that.
Perfect.
Okay, starting in this episode, we are going to spend a little bit of time on the end of each episode probably two or three minutes talking about a free tool.
And there's a lot out there.
So there's always some caveats with free tools. Again, with that data privacy stuff. We'll be talking about that more in the next episode. But there are a lot of really great free tools out there websites, Chrome extensions, apps, you know, built in things that we really use fairly frequently. Some with students, some just for ourselves, right. So the one we want to talk about first day, this is a Chrome extension. It's called snooze tab. Um, this extension is probably my first go to when I get anybody into extensions. And Carolyn, I find it funny that I've never shown this to you.
You actually told me about it,
but you've never seen it. Oh, well, I use it now. Oh, okay.
But this was a conversation we had, I don't know probably six months ago. I think it was probably around the time we went to closing the gap because because when you go to most conferences, you have all these things flying at you. So you don't want to lose them. So this is a great way to like keep them alive but not in your face. So I have to tell you when I was presenting at ATIA this last week, when I talk about snooze tab, I always have people like raise their hands, tell me how many tabs you have open, you know, keep your Keep your hand up. If you have two tabs open, keep your head up. Keep your hand up. I hit my record. I hit my record. I had one lady at ATIA that had 40 tabs open. That was impressive. That's a lot even for me. Correct. And so like my panic is, you know, I get you don't want to close things because you don't want to lose them.
But if your computer runs out of power or something glitch happened to the browser, you've lost them anyway. So back on topic, so there's an extension called snooze tab. So if you go to the Chrome Web Store, like we talked about a little bit earlier, you're simply going to search snooze tab. What that's going to do is it's going to put a little halfmoon up on guessed crescent moon not really half up on your toolbar to the right of the omni bar where you type in the address. What's really great about snooze tab is when you click on it, it gives you a menu that asks you when you want to see the tab again. So it will say later today, this evening, tomorrow, next week, my favorite, it'll ask you if you want to see it again someday. Right.
And what's great about this is when you click on that the tab actually goes away. So kind of like when you put it in bookmarks like it goes away, you can still get at it. There's a list, there's a spot for sleeping tabs so you can see the tab if you need it back earlier. But what's different about this between this and bookmarks is this tab will automatically come back You don't have to go looking for so like my black hole of bookmarks that I just have never go back to. This is amazing because it'll come back up. So like if I'm interested in something at a conference. I can just click next week, and that tab will go away and it will come back at eight o'clock Monday morning. So this is a great way to help students stay organized with research. It's a great way for you to stay organized with materials, maybe from conferences or things you want to see again.
It's just a great tool that you won't lose stuff.
Yeah. One of my favorite is the repeatedly, like, I love that it's pesky. Hmm. So like, I have certain journals that I read. And before this, like I'd never remember to actually, like, go back to it to read it. But with repeatedly, I have those journals open up at a certain time, once a week, and then I see them again. And sometimes I have the time to read them. And sometimes I just close them knowing that next week, they'll pop up again, right. So again, if you're interested at all, we'll be putting up a short video and it'll be up on our website as well. But otherwise, you can go to the Chrome Web Store and search snooze tab to check this one out. While we were recording today, we realized that there is some background noise We may need to do some introductions. As we are recording we have the lovely attendance of two rescue dogs. The one you're probably going to hear most often is Bucket she's a basset. You can go ahead and check out the website for some pictures of her. She's also our most stubborn
Yes, she's not going very far today.
Yeah, so she tends to hang out pretty close. She's firmly planted under the desk tonight. Yes, which means that you are likely going to hear at some point either a little bit of whining as she's waiting to be pet or some snoring and she falls asleep on their feet or clicking of the nails. Or clicking of the nail so she wanders around. The other rescue we have here is Bones. She's a little more active. She's right now trying to stalk some cats I believe. When she comes through usually with her you're going to hear her color tags jangling a little bit so we initially thought about editing some of that out. I don't think it's gonna pay. And now we have given up so if you ever hear that alongside Welcome to bucket and bones and yeah, they're typically pretty quiet but occasionally if you hear snoring, it's not us snoring while we record
Nope. we're good.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the disruptive teaching podcast. We hope you found something useful to support or engage the students you work with. For more information, visit disrputive-teaching.com and follow us on social media on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. And connect with us on Twitter with the hashtag #disruptiveteaching.