Save Me Time and Effort

As I've talked about before, one of the several important things technology brings to the table is the ability of teachers and administrators to save valuable time by getting things done with less effort, fewer steps, and better results.

There's a boatload of apps, widgets, and extensions available in Google Chrome, completely free, that can help.  And there are other advantages to using Chrome as your primary browser.

Some of you are longtime chrome users, so most of what I have to say here is old news.  But there are many who are new to chrome, or prefer to continue with Internet Explorer.  Others may be using Safari (Apple) or FireFox (from Mozilla).  Using Chrome doesn't mean you can't continue to use some other preferred browser, just take advantage of Chrome's features where it makes sense for you.

Here's a list of useful "stuff" I've used.  You can find these (and tons more) at the Chrome Web Store.  To install a tool, click on it to retrieve its description page, then click the blue "+" sign in the upper right.


Google Docs
You can install apps which will automatically launch Google docs directly from your browser. Search Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Google Forms, Google Drive in the Chrome Store.

View Microsoft Office documents directly in the browser
When you have a Microsoft Office document (.doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, etc.) embedded in a website, attached to an email or linked on blog or website, you have to download and then open with MS Office. With Chrome Office Viewer you can automatically display the file without download or leaving the browser.

PDFs
In an early blog post I highlighted a few apps which greatly help in utilizing PDFs.  PDF Mergy and PDF Escape are simple, free, and powerful.  Search in the Chrome store and you'll find dozens more.  Another terrific app to use with PDFs is Sejda.  What this chrome app allows  you to do, among other things, is to selectively save specific pages (and page ranges) from a PDF.  So, you found a great handout on the web from another teacher but for your class you'd like to skip pages 2, 4, & 7.  No problem, use Sejda to select the pages you want, save it, done.

File conversions
Changing a file's format is a common and repeated task.  Usually it's converting a .DOC, .PPT, or Google doc to PDF so it's displayable by anyone on the web.  Sometimes, you may want to go the other way - PDF to .DOC.  Cloud Convert is a general purpose file conversion utility - from anything to anything.  PDF to Word is just that, converts a PDF text to an editable .DOC file.  How many times have you found a useful document online in PDF form and wish you could make a few changes here and there for a class handout? With this tool you can. Video Convert will convert one video file format to another, useful when you have an MP4 file you've downloaded and you need to have a Flash video (flv, f4v) to load onto your EdLine website.

Get me to my Files - Quickly

Skydrive, Dropbox and Google Drive all have Chrome apps which allow you to quickly access your cloud storage.


Get Rid of the clutter - ads and such
Every wish you can view a website purely for its content and skip all the ads and distractions.  Clearly makes blog posts, webpages, and articles easier to read.

Save time typing
Have certain words or phrases you find yourself using very frequently in emails, documents, student assignments, etc.  POPCHROM is a chrome extension which allows you to define a unique a text sequence as a short-hand for a longer phrase.  For example, you could define the string "fyi" to translate to "I saw this article on the web and thought you might be interested"

Take Quick Notes
Chrome has dozens of apps for simple note taking. The two I like are Google Keep (its like a personal bulletin board) and Quick Note from Diigo.


Why Use Chrome
Chrome isn't simply a web browser, it's a platform for launching and managing applications.  One of the important, practical advantages of chrome is that it remembers all your browsing history, bookmarks, often visited sites, etc.  And because it it cloud based it doesn't matter when, where or how you access your chrome account.  That history, those bookmarks are there.