If you have never heard the term TL;DR before, it stands for "too long; didn't read." It is a common phrase you can find on message posts around the internet but now it can also be used in your web browser. There are a couple of different Chrome Extensions that can provide your learners with the ability to TL;DR a website. These extensions have several benefits to help those in your classroom and assist those that need a little extra assistance. TL;DR extensions can help students judge a website quickly while researching to see if it contains information they need. The extensions can also remove districting images from the text and help keep the learners on task. Lastly, TL;DR extensions can also help the struggling reader in your classrooms. Instead of being overwhelmed by giant articles, a student with reading disabilities can be presented with a summary of the text.

There are two awesome Chrome Extensions that you and your students can use to bring TL;DR into your learning environment. In the video below you can see the comparison of different TL;DR Chrome extensions, tlda and TLDR:. Give it a watch and then leave a comment with which one you prefer best!

The end of the school year is coming soon and the need to help graduating Seniors, retiring staff, and others moving out of the district, move their Google type things to a new account will be upon us. To help those with this need I created a little informational guide and video that shows how to use Google Takeout Transfer.

Direct Link to Guide | Direct Link to Tutorial Video

NOTICE:
The new Google Sites is now available for personal Google accounts! Thank you to fellow edtech awesome person Melinda for letting me know!

First off just let me say I love GIFs, Giffy, GIF, GIF. So when I found the GIFit! Chrome extension I was like, THIS IS AMAZING! Using the GIFit! Chrome extension I can create a GIF from any YouTube video that I could then add to my website, a Google Doc, a Google Slide, Google Classroom, or any other resource that supports GIFs. 

This GIF on this post was created using GIFit! and shows how to install the extension. If you need something a little more in-depth, I created a YouTube tutorial video that shows how the extension works and how to insert it into a Google Doc. You can find the video below.

Ever have too many homepages and/or too many tabs? Toby is a Chrome Extension that can help you manage your browser more efficiently! Toby allows you to create groups of tabs to open all at the same time. This is great for educators who have a group of websites they use to morning and/or afternoon routines. 

You can also create categories to further organize your websites. This is a great website for those who are either super organized or need help getting organized. Watch the tutorial below to see how easy it is to setup Toby and get it working.

Often Chrome Extensions can either catergorized as either a great productivity tool or a button that makes something funny happen in my browser. Google's Santa Tracker attempts to be both. On one hand you can make a holiday scence appear on any website, but on the other hand you can learn about coding and world traditions.

Santa Tracker is perfect for just about any grade and can be a teacher driven or student driven activity.

I've had several requests so far this year on how to help students who need the ability to do voice to text on a device. In fact, I had so many requests I thought I would create a brief tutorial on how easy it is to do in Google Docs! So watch the video below to see how a learner or possibly yourself can use Voice Typing.

| Additional Voice Typing Commands |

1-Click-Timer is a great Chrome extension to have in your educational arsenal. It is a super easy to use timer and works without a hitch! Watch the video above to see how the extension works and to receive some helpful hints & tips. You can download the extension here: 1-Click-Timer.

Nothing is worse than pulling up a YouTube video to show in front of a classroom and then having a very questionable ad starting playing. In fact, I know a few teachers that actually have nightmares about this very situation.

This whole situation can be bypassed if you use an adblocker extension, and the one I am demoing here is uBlock Origin. This is a extension that can be added to Google Chrome to stop ads from loading on videos and websites. In the video below you will see me comparing websites side-by-side to show how effective uBlock Origin can be!

So one of the best features for Chromebooks was the Webcam Capture tool in YouTube. Using the Webcam Capture tool students could film themselves with their Chromebooks and have it uploaded to YouTube. Unfortunately though Google is pulling the plug on this great service on January 16th! So the question is, what do we do now? 

Well you don't have to worry, because I found a pretty good alternative. ClipChamp allows students to record up-to five minutes of webcam footage for free. This doesn't seem long, but normally it is more than enough for student projects. If the video needs to be longer, students can film multiple clips and put them together using several different methods, the YouTube video editor, they could put them together in a playlist, or have links to each video in a Google Doc or a ThingLink.

Watch the video above to see how easy it can be to do a ClipChamp webcam capture.