Activity 5 - Apps, Add-ons, and Extensions


Apps, add-ons, and extensions are great tools and can greatly improve the learning experience for students and teachers but restraint needs to be used until students can learn how to select those apps, add-ons, and, extensions that will help improve their learning. I worry that without correct guidance, students will add all apps that they think are "cool", which will overload them with these programs. If they have too many of these apps, and add-ons, the "good ones" will get lost. 

I enjoyed having some time to search through the chrome app store. I found a few that I have used before and some that caught my attention. I listed a few below. 

Pear Deck - I think this is a great app. It is easy to use and allows students to easily make presentations that can be shared among peers and teachers. I think this is a great app for younger aged students because the types of slides you can use are limited but have everything students would need. I have had some small issues while working with Pear Deck in the past. I have experienced issues with uploading pictures and video which can be frustrating, especially if you are working in the classroom and don't have all the time you need to figure out what is going wrong.

Movenote - I am very excited to try using Movenote more this school year. I think it will allow me to differentiate more in the classroom and free me up a little bit to work with students who are struggling with the material. My hope is to record lessons that extend a topic we are working on. This will be shown to those students who have a strong understanding of the content and are ready to take it a step or two further. While these students might be exploring deeper, I will be working more directly with small groups of students who might need a little more guidance. 

Newsela - I love Newsela and use it quite frequently throughout the year. I love the ability to adjust text difficutly based on lexile and I love the comprehension questions and quizzes that accompany many of the articles. Teachers can assign texts to students or classes with the comprehension questions or open response questions. Student answers will be sent directly to the teachers binder for grading. It can be difficult finding non-fiction texts that are appropriate and interesting to early-intermediate elementary students. Although this website fits more with middle and high school,  I feel Newsela is a great resource for students who are reading to learn. I am excited to use Newsela this year with a class set of chrombooks. I felt in the past that organizing content from Newsela was tricky. printing off different lexile levels for each student. I think that being able to assign from the website will make things much smoother and easy to organize.

Readability - I think this is a great extension for getting rid of clutter on pages. Readability removes all the ads and pointless items on a web page and only leaves the important information. This will allow students to focus more on what they are reading. I need to dig a little deeper into readability because when I use this in chrome the text it displays is very small. It can be tough to read. I hope that Readability has the ability to adjust text size or this might not work in the classroom, which is too bad.

Translate for Google Drive - I am always translating material or communication throughout the year. I love the idea of having this app available whenever I need it. It helps me translate into many languages which is helpful.


There are so many apps, add-ons, and extensions that I want to try. There are some great ones that you need to have accounts or paid subscriptions. This makes using them very difficult for younger students. One in particular that I came across was Livebooklet. This turns lessons, assignments and class projects into flip booklets. You can create content from scratch or upload PDFs. With a subscription, the teacher, as well as 30 students will have access. I think this is neat because if students start creating content you can set up an archive that will act as a class gallery for other teachers and parents to see. 

I will admit that some frustration set in during this assignment due to being overwhelmed by how many apps, add-ons, and extensions there are and how to decide if they would work in my classroom. Many of the ones I came across, you need to have a log-in. It got old. It concerns me that so many require a log-in. Even if it is free, it is a lot of information to remember, especially for a K-12 student. Overall, I am excited to begin using these apps, add-ons, and extensions in my classroom. I am looking forward to finding a few that will excite my students and push their understanding further.