I recently attended a webinar by the awesome Cool Cat Teacher (blog here), and to be honest, I signed up for the webinar thinking “15 Best Tools for G Suite for Education Users”… let me just see what she has to say. I’m sure I know most of it, but… I’m game” Well, let me say, I learned a TON! Lots of great tools out there for educators, and most of her “tools” were in fact Chrome add-ons that add lots of great features. One especially is super useful for those teaching literacy.
Read&Write for Chrome – Chrome Web Store
This fancy tool shows a toolbar (which can be customized based on just the features you want and are going to use) for using while browsing the web. Here are several features I found helpful:
- Highlight text, and have it read to the student — and then save the audio as an mp3 to be emailed to yourself
- Highlight text as you read a webpage, in different colors — and then send all your highlights (or only those of a specific color) into a Google Doc
- Screenmask – Darken the screen except for the small portion where a student is reading (great for students with reading differences!)
- “Show me a picture” – students can highlight a word they are unfamiliar with, and then use “show me a picture” to get an easily visual of the object
- Screenshot reader – take a screenshot, and have text read to you!
I see all sorts of possibilities for the Language Arts classroom with this great tool!
(P.S. if you’re interested in more information gleaned from this particular webinar — here is the handout!)
Amanda M. Orozco 