Google Drive is only a part of the Google universe of opportunities.

The most exciting application from this week's learning is Explore. This tool on Google docs, sheets and slides allows you to search using the Google right within the document. The ease of use is tremendous. Instead of navigating to a new or different tab, the students can search or fact-check right within the Google document. I found it somewhat difficult to work at first, but with practice, it was much smoother.

The other time-saving and enriching addition to the digital classroom I found was the variety of free templates available to teachers. The choice board template was especially helpful and will make my student's experiences richer. This is a free Teachers Pay Teachers product, but it was visually interesting and well constructed.

 An extension/app that could be beneficial for students to use for note-taking, especially during remote and hybrid learning models, is Google Keep. It can be used by students to take notes during class, for annotating information from websites, and many other ways. Keep can be used to organize learning, create reminders, and even has a collaboration feature. 

Google calendar is much more than just a place to record events. You can set up reminders, take notes, and organize tasks.

Toby is an extension for Chrome that allows you to open multiple tabs at one time. Every morning I log into our district rapid identity portal and then open our online textbook, google classroom, and google drive. Instead of opening each one individually, I can use Toby to open all at once. It is easy to add to the list of tabs by clicking and dragging.

Text Blaze will allow users to insert regularly used snippets of text using a shortcut. There are many times when educators are inserting feedback that is identical for dozens of students. Saving thirty seconds on each of dozens of feedback opportunities will add up greatly.

Google Chrome Extensions and Blogger

 There are a huge number of extensions that can be added to Chrome, making it easier and more efficient for teachers and students to use. This is especially important as so many districts shifted to remote learning and now to a hybrid model of learning. The extensions are found in the Chrome Web Store and are extremely easy to install and use. The ones I found most useful are ScreenShot Capture & Edit Tool, Alice Keeler Class roster, and Random Student Generator. 

The screenshot capture and edit tool can be used to take an image of a website and add notes and things like circles around important information. I plan on using this extension to both collect information to share with students and also to have them collect information and share it with each other and me.

Randomly choosing a student to share during a remote class meeting can be easily achieved using the Random Student Generator designed especially for use with a Google Classroom.

There are numerous tutorials on how to maximize the applications in Chrome and some good ones are located here: https://skillshop.exceedlms.com/student/path/61209-fundamentals-training