Google Apps & Extensions To Support Learning & Productivity
Over the last couple of weeks, I have been introducing a variety of Google apps to Years 4 and 5 to support their learning. These apps include speech to text, text to speech, summarising, readability-which clears a webpage of distractions making it easier to read, spelling & grammar checkers, mindmaps and other productivity apps. I have shared with each student OLF Great Chrome Apps and Extensions 2020.docx (example below) with all the recommended apps listed, with a short description, a link to the Chrome Webstore for downloading and if possible a short explanation video. The Google app doc has been divided into categories, each category has a variety of apps included, most of which are FREE! Not every app will be needed as I have listed multiple apps under each category to support personal choice and also at any one time one of the free apps may not be working. Students have been shown how to download and pin a Chrome app or extension to their toolbar.
Read & Write for Google & Co: Writer (description below) are both excellent apps to support a student’s literacy. These 2 apps do have a cost but a free version is available for your child to trial first. You would not need to purchase both as they do similar things. These apps are also great support for high school and beyond.
If your child is in Yr 4 or 5 (Year 6 had their lesson and this doc shared last year), ask them to show you the various apps they downloaded and how they are used. I think many of you will be downloading certain apps to use yourselves (as have myself and many teachers) as they save a lot of time. Enjoy!
One of the best and most full-featured extensions is Read&Write for Google, created by Texthelp, a leading AT developer. The extension takes different forms depending on the content with which students are working. For websites, a pop-up toolbar is available with supports, like text-to-speech with synchronized highlighting, a talking dictionary, a picture dictionary, and annotation tools.
For the creation of Google Docs, the toolbar adds functions dictation and word prediction. If students are working with PDF documents within Google Drive, the Read&Write extension opens those documents in new tabs that contain text-to-speech tools, as well as various note-taking and annotation tools. Finally, there is an available add-on tool called Snapverter, which performs optical character recognition (OCR) on inaccessible text. By using the Snapverter add-on, students can convert smartphone photographs of hard-copy handouts into text that can be read aloud by Read&Write for Google. Snapverter now part of a suite of tools. Just click on the dotted square.
$300/yr for all platforms ie PC Mac Chrome Ipad Note: There is a paid version with all the tools and a free version with a subset of the tools. Educators can get the paid version at no cost by filling out the form at http://rw.texthelp.com/drive/home/RegisterTeacher
Co:Writer Universal seamlessly integrates into the Chrome browser on Mac, Windows, and Chromebooks. Both an app and extension are available for nearly any writing task. The app features a built-in word processor that shares writings over the cloud. The extension lets you use Co:Writer when writing on websites, blogs, and Google Drive! And now built-in speech recognition works anywhere you use Co: Writer!
It’s built right into the Co: Writer Universal Chrome Extension, so students can speak their responses in Google Drive, email, and websites then go back and edit with Co: Writer!
