Quick Update + Some Google Chrome Love

We continue moving in a positive direction with our Google Apps roll out...

On March 15th we began the trainings for our Early Adopter Second wave. The training went great! We began by working with our Math Leadership team. These teachers are relatively tech savvy so they were able to help us refine our training materials before we work with the rest of this wave. By this time next week, we will have approximately 120 staff members moved over to our domain and using Mail, Calendar, and Docs as their primary productivity tools.

This is the part of our roll out plan where we begin to introduce students into our domain. While this is incredibly exciting, it is also a little scary as we want to make sure that we teach students how to communicate appropriately online and begin to "put them out there" so that they can collaborate with others. I am so excited to see where this goes from now until the end of the year.

Ok--and now a little Google love...

Wow! We are experimenting with so many different Chrome Apps and Extensions. This has been really fun to do with staff that is already into our domain and using Chrome as their primary browser. Our goal is to test as many as we possibly can to create a district-wide "best of" list by Fall.

Here are three extensions that I use everyday:

1. The goo.gl Shortener

Why do I use this? Well, previous to this extension in order to shorten Urls to share, I would have to copy them, navigate to goo.gl, paste and then copy the new Url and paste that where I need it. With this extension, I navigate to the page, click the extension and BAM! It shortens for me and provides the new link in the same window. Saves too many clicks to count!

2. Diigo Extension

If you are a Diigo user, this is very similar to the toolbar or Diigolet. We have many teachers using Diigo so I like to share this as a quick way to annotate or highlight on a page and then share it out.

3. Turn Off the Lights Extension

AWESOME!! This extension dims the rest of the screen when showing any video. Nice to use in the classroom to eliminate distractions. You literally turn off the lights around the video and when you are done, they turn back on. What's not to love?

That's it for now. We are compiling a huge list of extensions and Apps. I will share out our top three Apps in the next post.

Stay tuned...